Victoria is Taking the Lead with Digital Twin Technology – And you can too

Digital innovation isn’t just for organisations – it’s for entire states and industries! With a $37.4 million investment in digital twin technology for Melbourne and regional locations, Victoria is setting the standard for digitisation at scale. Here’s what it’s all about and how your industry can make use of digital twin technology.

What is digital twin technology?

Using machine learning, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and 5G, digital twin technology allows you to create a real-time virtual model of a physical object, location, or system. Essentially, it’s a fully interactive representation of anything you can find in the real world, from manufacturing lines and equipment to entire states.

What is the Victorian digital twin investment project all about?

The Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning is working in partnership with CSIRO to create a virtual representation of Victoria. This system is the next, larger phase of the project, collecting over 4000 datasets from sensor systems focused on environmental and infrastructure aspects of the state.

Using it, teams can monitor a wide range of conditions for performance and future planning, including everything from exploring areas as a pedestrian, right through to live data feeds for energy production (including green energy production), patterns of traffic and pedestrian movement, and more. It also contains features such as advanced earth observation, utility modes, automated approval systems, enhanced disaster response, and asset management.

This is a game changer for both monitoring project performance and existing infrastructure and systems as well as developing future projects. With a digital twin, you can monitor situations in real-time, contrast them with historical data, test complex changes and projects before implementation – and do it all without having to travel, bring teams together physically, or step into the real world.

Putting digital twins to use for you

Of course, digital twins aren’t just for states and government, they’re a revolutionary tech for businesses too. Here are some use case scenarios to see how this tech translates for your industry.

• Manufacturing – Use this tech to help engineers test the feasibility of upcoming projects, to design different versions of a product, to monitor and adapt workflow and manufacturing line equipment, and predict preventative maintenance needs.
• Healthcare – Create a digital twin of your hospital to monitor traffic, operational strategies, staffing, and capacity. Implement changes in VR environments to test suitability and performance before making real-world changes and use it to model drug development to create personalised patient medications.
• Construction – Collect building performance data to inform future improvements or design changes, plan and design new buildings and test them rigorously for performance before you get to work and showcase building design and operation to present compelling data and interactive elements to sell your vision.
• Supply chain – From predicting packaging performance to enhancing shipment prediction by testing packaging conditions, logistics and supply chain have a lot to gain from this technology. You can also optimise warehouse design, test new layouts, and create a virtual logistics network to optimise delivery times, truck performance, distribution routes, and inventory storage using real-time road, traffic, and environment conditions knowledge.
• Retail – Utilise historical and current data for customer modelling and simulations, planning shop layouts, forecasting product demand, reducing wastage, tracking product sales and inventory and optimising storage.
• Research and design – Use digital twins to develop models that can be tested and improved in a virtual space, significantly reducing costs. It’s also useful for creating personalised or customised products, ensuring that when the product is manufactured, it is exactly what the customer wants, reducing errors and wastage.

At Otto, we are committed to always doing better, using the best-in-case technology, and always innovating in how we can help our clients use IT to get a competitive edge. Chat to our managed IT solutions team today to find out more about how we can help your business innovate, succeed, and grow, through digital transformation.