Digital Twins could avert tragedies like Grenfell, say industry experts
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Summary:
Digital Twins – using rich data and visualisation techniques to model things – could help us make smarter, more sustainable decisions for our communities.
(Bola Abisogun)
Digital Twin technology could have saved lives at Grenfell, and perhaps even averted the tragedy completely. That s the claim of Bola Abisogun, OBE, Chairman of DiverseCity Surveyors, a 27-year veteran of the construction industry who is committed to battling inequality with data and informed engineering.
The 2017 disaster, in which 72 residents of the Grenfell Tower in Kensington, London, lost their lives in an inferno, has become a byword for inaction and greed by private contractors, the use of cheap, combustible materials in buildings, and councils lack of insight into the supply chains behind social properties. It s a problem that exists in towns and cities throughout the world, particularly af
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The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has urged the government to provide the funding needed for the National Digital Twin programme.
In its Annual Monitoring Report 2021 it has also called for a focus on accelerating the roll out of high capacity broadband and set targets for the availability of 5G.
Its section on digital and data points to the potential for the National Digital Twin, the programme for which is run by the Centre for Digital Built Britain and is aimed at creating an ecosystem of digital twins to support planning, investment and monitoring of infrastructure and the built environment.
Erecting steel structures is a hazardous occupation and a staggering 60 per cent of construction accidents can be attributed to workers being injured by rebar.
Rebar is made from different grades of steel and, as its name suggests, is used to reinforce the tensile strength of concrete structures. It is supplied in the form of rods and is fabricated into cage structures by hand before being encased in concrete to carry out its vital, unseen function.
Workers stooping to tie rebar at intersections can develop musculoskeletal disorders and a Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 2018/19 estimated 42,000 work-related cases of such injury, accumulating to three fifths of all ill health in this sector.