With digital twin projects attracting tens of millions of dollars in public funding in Australia, challenges around data, skills and standards look like coming into sharper focus.

For comment on this, we spoke to Gavin Cotterill, founder and managing director of digital twin advisory and consulting firm GC3 Digital and co-founder and director of digital built environment education provider TEMPO Institute.

Cotterill has extensive involvement in digital twin projects and industry groups in Australia and is involved in the development of relevant standards.

On May 23, he will take part in a panel discussion titled ‘Smarter precincts: the convergence of planning, Internet of Things (IoT) and digital twin’ at the IoT Impact 2023 conference in Sydney. The conference, produced by IoT Alliance Australia, Australia’s peak industry body for IoT, and IoT Hub, will examine the use of IoT to tackle resilience, sustainability and productivity challenges, among other topics.

“We're now seeing state and territory governments look at what digital-by-default means and we are starting to see funding being released by treasuries in certain states and territories,” Cotterill said, referring to Infrastructure Australia’s recommendation for ‘digital by default’ infrastructure planning and delivery.

That funding includes $38 million over four years from the Digital Twin Victoria project, to deliver digital twin work streams.

There is also the New South Wales Spatial Digital Twin, funded with around $40 million, while the business case for the South East Queensland Digital Twin Workbench has been submitted, Cotterill said.

Local governments including those in Hobart, the City of Melbourne and Western Sydney have started to look at how digital twins could help deliver better services to the public, he added.

Cotterill has also started to see ‘digital-by-default’ “permeating capital projects”, citing Sydney Water’s interest in digital twins, and the Sydney Metro capital works program.

"One of the really positive things that we're seeing within the sector now is that top down [approach], that investment growth being activated,” Cotterill said.

That’s an opportunity to make better use of previously purchased IoT – smart lighting, bins and parking systems, for example – Cotterill pointed out.

“I'm really buoyed by seeing all different facets of the built environment and three layers of government now starting to realize that they've invested a hell of a lot of money in IoT [Internet of Things], building information modelling, geospatial,” he commented.

“Now what we're seeing is the opportunity to double down on that investment and really leverage that existing investment that they've made, to surface that data and information to make better decisions around planning, capital delivery, operations and service delivery.”

Data, skills, standards challenges

However, data quality remains a hurdle. “A lot of people think digital twin is just focus on a flashy 3D model, but effectively it is a master data management strategy,” Cotterill commented. “You need good quality data to support that decision making and the quality of our data, generally, is pretty poor. We have a lot of data, but we don't know what to do with it.”

“Data governance, data strategy is the unsexy part of digital twin – it’s the engine room, it’s the fuel.”

These data considerations encompass everything from the automation of data handling to the importance of governance frameworks.

For instance, Cotterill notes that “what we find in a lot of major projects and organisations is data is manually handled, interpreted, augmented etc. What we need to do is in terms of digital twins to start become more automated.”

Before embarking on a digital twin program, organisations should establish a baseline in terms of the quality of the data that they need, Cotterill pointed out.

“Understand where you're at, and then put a governance structure in place to ensure that you manage that data. And that could be something like ISO 8000 as a framework to manage that data. That's really important for any digital twin program.”

Skills shortages are also holding back the uptake of digital twins, Cotterill said. “We don't have digital twin educated people in the market at the moment. How do we train these people up? How do we educate them to effectively deliver on these programs?” he asked.

Lack of digital twin standards are also a challenge in his view. “We don't currently have standards around digital twin, they are being developed by ISO. Having some standards to have a consistent way of procuring and managing digital twins is really important,” he said.

Overcoming these challenges can enable government organisations to combine data from IoT with other data sets - for example, to identify unintended consequences of putting a new precinct or car park in a location.

“The technology is here. That for me is a less of a concern. It's more around people, standards, and data. There are three key things in terms of the challenges that we face at the moment.”

Gavin Cotterill will take part in a panel discussion titled ‘Smarter precincts: the convergence of planning, Internet of Things (IoT) and digital twin’ at the IoT Impact 2023 conference. IoT Impact will take place at the Sydney International Convention Centre on May 23. See the agenda and purchase tickets to IoT Impact 2023.