Transport for London (TfL) has partnered with visual intelligence company Spinview to develop a digital twin of the London Underground.
The digital model will improve the safety and efficiency of maintaining the network by monitoring tracks and tunnels and providing detailed 3D images. It will also provide data on heat levels, noise levels and carbon emissions.
Spinview was awarded the UK government’s smart grant, which will fund the partnership and support the Mayor of London’s ambition to have a zero carbon railway by 2030.
The project will start by modelling the Piccadilly Line, one of the Underground’s ‘deep tube’ lines with some track as low as 30m below ground level. The data collected by the digital twin will be available to employees across TfL to help them better manage assets and help reach environmental targets.
Spinview’s Deep Rail Sensor (DRS) device will not only capture the geometry of the spaces, but it will uncover environmental pollutants to establish a true baseline for the Underground’s current carbon emissions, allowing for more accurate measuring and tracking of the progress towards its environmental goals.
Linda Wade, co-founder and chief executive of Spinview, said: “By establishing a visually intelligent ecosystem for TfL, Spinview hopes to not only help TfL in tracking its environmental goals, but also to support in facilitating better decision-making, driving forward business efficiencies, saving costs and future-proofing the network in the long-term.”
According to TfL, the ‘deep tube’ has previously been impossible to map in full detail. The digital twin will provide a real-world replica with information that has previously been hidden, such as faults, heat hotspots and noise sources. Furthermore, it will allow engineers to inspect issues outside of the current engineering hours of 1-5am.
Paul Judge, TfL’s director of the Piccadilly Line upgrade project, said: “This partnership with Spinview offers us a really exciting opportunity to gain real-time access to our assets on the Underground network, many of which we can currently only inspect during engineering hours.
“Not only will using digital-twin technology support the smarter, more efficient maintenance of the railway, it will also enable us to more accurately monitor environmental challenges such as carbon emissions, noise levels and heat as we strive to do more to lessen our carbon footprint and help tackle the climate emergency.”
