WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — A diverse group of global utilities, solution providers, academia, and thought leaders have developed a groundbreaking Digital Twin Readiness Guide, the first-of-its-kind roadmap for Digital Twin implementation to advance the water industry.
Spearheaded by the SWAN Forum, Brown and Caldwell, DHI, and with contributions from numerous partners, the zero-cost guide was launched at the SWAN Annual Conference this week. At its core, the guide applies SWAN’s state-of-the-art Digital Twin architecture, the water industry standard for planning and implementing Digital Twins.
The SWAN Digital Twin Utility Advisory Group, consisting of representatives from Global Omnium, Sydney Water, Aarhus Vand, Clean Water Services, and DC Water, hailed the guide’s potential:
“As leading utilities, we believe the SWAN Digital Twin Readiness Guide can transform the water sector by enabling utilities and the industry to understand the foundation of a Digital Twin as they embark on or continue their implementation journey.”
A Digital Twin is a real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process. Akin to an airplane’s co-pilot, Digital Twin uses analytical and predictive modeling to speed up and validate decision-making to automate time-consuming and manual engineering or operator processes.
Benefits to utilities include better prediction and preparedness for seasonal or climate-driven condition changes, asset and operational health analysis for investment optimization, and what-if scenario simulations for safer training environments.
While Digital Twin implementation is unique to each utility, deployment steps are foundational to achieving optimized, cost-efficient water and wastewater systems. Digital Twin readiness is scalable, iterative, and likely phased over time, depending on the utility’s unique needs, budget, infrastructure, and software requirements.
The Digital Twin Readiness Guide provides the framework, steps, and path to achieve essential insights leading to more intuitive water systems operations, making the utility more efficient.
Global case studies detailing the successful implementation of SWAN’s Digital Twin architecture are included in the guide. Projects include a Singapore-based water reclamation plant, an urban drainage project for Denmark’s largest wastewater utility, and several water treatment and network projects in Spain and Italy.
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About Brown and Caldwell
Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, Brown and Caldwell is a full-service environmental engineering and construction firm with 52 offices and 1,800 professionals across North America and the Pacific. For 75 years, our creative solutions have helped municipalities, private industry, and government agencies successfully overcome their most challenging water and environmental obstacles. As an employee-owned company, Brown and Caldwell is passionate about exceeding our clients’ expectations and making a difference for our employees, our communities, and our environment. For more information, visit www.brownandcaldwell.com
About SWAN
The Smart Water Networks Forum (SWAN) is the leading, global hub for the smart water sector. Founded in 2010, SWAN is uniquely focused on increasing the awareness and acceleration of smart, data-driven solutions in drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater networks worldwide by bringing like-minded people together. By aligning industry thought leaders and fostering inclusive collaboration across municipal, commercial, academia, regulatory and non-profit sectors, we have become the key driving force in proactively influencing the smart water sector. Learn more at www.swan-forum.com/
About DHI
DHI is a leading, innovative, and global advisory company that integrates deep domain knowledge with advanced digital technology to enable new ways to use, manage and live with water and ecosystems. Headquartered in Denmark since 1964, DHI employs more than 1,000 professionals working from offices in more than 30 countries worldwide. For over 50 years, we have researched and worked on ways to save water, share it fairly, improve its quality, quantify its impacts, and manage its flow. As an independent and self-owned organization, we strive to make this knowledge globally accessible by channeling through our local teams and unique MIKE Powered by DHI software. Learn more about us at www.dhigroup.com
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