New digital twin blueprint could accelerate the UK’s journey to net zero transport

A new standardised approach to designing digital twins for transport decarbonisation across road, rail, air and maritime has been developed by researchers at Cranfield University as part of the UK research hub, TransiT.

The digital twin design framework is detailed in the journal, Sustainable Cities and Society, and is described as the first to adapt an international standard for digital twin design in manufacturing – ISO-23247 – to the transport sector.

Digital twins are digital replicas of the physical world that are increasingly used in transport and other sectors for functions such as predictive maintenance and ‘what-if’ scenario planning.

Research lead author Dr Maryam Farsi is a TransiT Co-Investigator and a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Optimisation at Cranfield University’s Centre for Digital and Design Engineering.

She said: “While digital twin technologies are increasingly being used in transport, it’s very fragmented, and most existing systems focus on specific areas or assets, like electric vehicle charging, traffic management or fleet operations. There’s limited interoperability between different modes of transport and few systems address decarbonisation.

“The framework we propose fills this gap by bringing together vehicles, personnel, transport infrastructure, processes, energy and data systems, climate factors, human decision-making and many other elements into a single, standardised digital environment.”

The researchers say the aim of their work is to help policymakers, industry and researchers by providing a common structure for organising the development of transport digital twins that are tailored to system-level decarbonisation across road, rail, maritime and air modes.

The work involved reviewing more than 100 academic studies and analysing over 10,000 records from literature and expert workshops. The research team then worked with a panel of specialists from three UK universities to refine and validate the design, adding more detail in areas including personnel, operational processes, alternative fuels, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, data exchange and cybersecurity.

The resulting framework combines five core elements: real-world observable assets such as vehicles, charging infrastructure and fuel systems; communication technologies that collect and exchange data; the digital twin itself; user-facing tools for planners and operators and cross-system functions covering interoperability, cybersecurity and governance.

“The framework is designed to incorporate emissions monitoring, energy efficiency analysis and carbon accounting as core capabilities rather than treating them as secondary features,” the authors explained. “This would allow organisations to test different decarbonisation strategies virtually before investing in real-world changes.”

To demonstrate their framework, the researchers present a use case involving the transfer of freight from air to road transport. This includes electric airport ground vehicles, electric heavy goods vehicles and planes using sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) – non-petroleum-based fuels that emit significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional fossil-based jet fuels.

In the scenario, a digital twin helps coordinate SAF supplies, electric ground support equipment, electric trucks and charging infrastructure, while monitoring emissions and operational performance across the system.

The authors say the framework is intended as a reference architecture rather than a finished product and will require further testing through pilot projects and real-world deployment.

Future research should include testing interoperability; developing user interfaces, security protocols and governance requirements and working with a wide range of stakeholders to further assess the tool and consider broader applications.

The research paper is entitled, A standardised Digital Twin design framework for transport system decarbonisation. Its co-authors are Bernadin Namoano, Christina Latsou and John Ahmet Erkoyuncu at Cranfield University; Mohammad Alquraan, Ahmad Taha and David Flynn at University of Glasgow and Dhanan Utomo and Phil Greening at Heriot-Watt University.

Cranfield University was founded as the College of Aeronautics in 1946 and is known for its specialisms in science, technology and management, including aerospace engineering and environment and agrifood.

The university is lead partner in TransiT’s Air and Road Freight Demonstrator, which is collaborating with East Midlands Airport in Leicestershire and with global logistics group DHL to develop a digital twin for air and road freight decarbonisation.

TransiT is a UK research hub using digital twins and associated technologies to identify the least-risky, lowest-cost routes to transport decarbonisation in the UK across road, rail, air and maritime, for both passengers and freight.

It is a collaboration of eight universities and more than 70 industry partners, jointly led by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, and supported by the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the main funding body for engineering and physical sciences research in the UK, and by the UK government’s Department for Transport.

TransiT’s other university partners are University of Leeds, University of Birmingham, Cranfield University, University College London, University of Cambridge and Durham University.

ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, is one of the world’s oldest non-governmental international organisations and was created in 1946 to agree on the best way of doing things – from making a product to managing a process.

Its ISO-23247 standard was developed to provide a universal framework for digital twins in manufacturing and was published in 2021.