The purpose of a digital twin in the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals is to enable us to build better (or post-Covid to build back better). This work provides a bold vision to create better outcomes for society and the environment. This has not been placed into government policy within the UK.

The UK government is seeking to become the second nation in the world after Singapore to develop a digital twin of the entire country. The purpose of this is to gain efficiency in infrastructure development by bringing together and sharing information.

The link of a digital twin to the SDGs is that the digital twin links the natural environment to the built environment, and we can evaluate and check our decisions across both i.e., what is the effect on the environment through a decision made in the built environment or on social outcomes and vice versa.

The role of Chemical Engineers is to understand the development of digital twins and interlink between our projects and the broader infrastructure around us. The development of digital twins is an enabler for efficiency across infrastructure development.

Find out more:

• Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030
• Industry unites behind Vision for the Built Environment | Centre for Digital Built Britain