Digital twins to the rescue

South Africa needs an accurate, real-time overview of its infrastructure – a single view of the truth that will help city officials make informed decisions. This is possible with digital twin technology.

By Dominic Collett

South Africa’s water system is in trouble. In the 2020/21 financial year alone, there were over 55 800 pipe bursts and over a third of reservoirs with supply problems. Years of underfunding of infrastructure replacement and maintenance have drastically reduced the lifespan of around a quarter of the country’s asset base.

If there is one lesson that we can take from South Africa’s electricity crisis, it is that we cannot wait until it is too late before we act. And yet, it is nearly too late. By 2025, South Africa is expected to experience water scarcity. By 2030, a water deficit.

With the rapid increase in urbanisation and the rising demand on our water infrastructure, we do not have the luxury of time. We need to begin with what we do have: political will and data.

Dominic Collett, urban development engineer and smart city specialist, Royal HaskoningDHV

Political will

National Treasury’s Infrastructure Delivery Management System (IDMS) sets out systematic processes for delivering and maintaining infrastructure in the public sector. It is a thorough document that outlines government’s strategy to enhance socio-economic growth and development through improved infrastructure delivery and unity in action.

The IDMS covers everything from project ownership, accountability and consistency to evidence-based decisionmaking and continuous improvement in scalability, capacity and capability. It sets a solid foundation for planning and budget alignment, identification and prioritisation of infrastructure projects, and improved risk management.

Data

Municipalities rely heavily on citizens to report water leaks, burst pipes, and supply or pressure issues. There are numerous channels to do this, including call centres, SMS, Twitter, or by emailing the ward councillor.

However, this data is siloed and unstructured. Some of it is inaccurate and unreliable, making it difficult for officials to know which issues to prioritise or the impact that repairing (or, indeed, not repairing) a fault will have on specific communities or institutions.

Imagine if officials had a real-time overview of every leak in the city? If they knew how much water they are losing, and how many users are affected. They could quickly deploy their teams to the areas that need help the most. And by combining this with South Africa’s well-documented climate and rainfall data, we could start building a digital representation of our water assets to identify patterns, hot spots, and opportunities for proactive maintenance. After all, assets are cheaper to maintain than they are to repair, and they are cheaper to repair than they are to replace.

This technology exists – officials can start installing sensors each time they repair or maintain infrastructure to begin collecting critical information about the country’s water catchment, storage and distribution network.

The groundwork described above paves the way for the ultimate prize: creating a digital twin of all assets, including water, energy and transport infrastructure.

Digital twinning

A digital twin is a virtual representation of physical assets, like buildings or water pipes. By sharing data between the virtual and physical environments, municipalities, city officials and planners can make the most of our infrastructure, and futureproof it to extend its lifespan.

With an accurate and detailed overview of our infrastructure – reflecting the state of each pipe, valve and pump – maintenance teams can work together rather than in siloes. For example, when the Maintenance Leak Repair Unit, the Asset Management Planning Unit, the Implementation of New Projects Unit and the Financial Budgeting Unit use the same data, they can set collective targets and control points.

Once this is done, there can be automated prioritisation. With information at their fingertips, city officials can make informed decisions backed by artificial intelligence and predictive analytics. They can also remove the risk of human error, while existing issues would be fixed faster.

Decision-makers would be able to see, in advance, when specific parts of the infrastructure will need maintenance. This sort of preventative maintenance would help officials to solve issues before they arise or become apparent to citizens and industry.

A digital replica would also create an immutable overview of all work done on

our infrastructure, when and by whom. The significance of this is huge – it would give those in charge access to all the information they need to make fact-based decisions. It would also help to build institutional memory and promote trust and transparency.

A digital twin is a virtual representation of physical assets, like buildings or water pipes. By sharing data between the virtual and physical environments, municipalities, city officials and planners can make the most of our infrastructure, and future-proof it to extend its lifespan

The work involved in building a digital twin would also create jobs – not just for computer programmers and data analysts but also for people needed to install sensors and devices. We need people to scan and capture data and analyse the information transmitted by those devices to be able to make decisions about how the asset should be used and maintained.

A virtual replica of the city would enable the public and private sectors to work together with citizens to use the data pulsing through the city – from water pipes, traffic lights, roads, businesses, parks and buildings – to make life more sustainable, efficient and liveable for everyone.

If we use the urgency that exists now to get our water infrastructure represented digitally and connected to digital automation and decision-making tools, we will be saving South African cities from a water crisis and laying the foundations to set up world-class digital African cities.