Municipalities have the burden of managing aging critical infrastructure while also attempting to future-proof against unprecedented risks, whether from climate change or human action. By diving deep into scenarios, investments, and human impact calculations — supported by GIS asset management software and enterprise GIS for infrastructure — we’re helping municipalities activate resilience for their critical services and resources.
RWI creates a live, interconnected Synthetic Twin fusing engineering data, spatial context, and synthetic populations to reveal how disruptions ripple through networks and communities. By integrating spatial analytics for infrastructure within these digital twins, leaders can uncover risk patterns and plan targeted interventions.
These twins advance fragmented data to strategic planning, providing a sandbox where virtual scenarios replace best guesswork, resulting in faster vulnerability assessment, reduction in downtime risk, and better capital gain through optimized investments with infrastructure optimization software.
Less guesswork means better resilience and significant cost savings. When it comes to securing infrastructure, keeping populations safe and managing budgets, Synthetic Twins forecast unprecedented tomorrows, today — enhanced with enterprise GIS for infrastructure that ensures spatial understanding at every level.
When it comes to securing infrastructure, keeping populations safe and managing budgets, Synthetic Twins forecast unprecedented tomorrows, today.
What We’ve Done
Figuring out water efficiency is a critical part of successful cities — for populations, industries, and to mitigate the impact of climate change and drought. Utility organizations are under increased pressure to reassess all aspects of water transportation and consumption, particularly in drought-affected regions like Southern California. We modelled residential water use in Southern California, reimagining how we measure water usage behaviours and integrating data on age, demographics, population, and time of day into spatial analytics for infrastructure dashboards.
Unprecedented climate events are becoming more frequent. Municipal decision-makers, utility organizations, and communities need to understand how to activate resilience for infrastructure, vulnerable populations, and mitigation technologies. But without historical precedents, models require informed and data-backed insights to de-risk risks before they occur. A resilience and community preparedness pilot project with the Tennessee Valley Authority simulated an unprecedented cold snap and subsequent power failure in Nashville using infrastructure optimization software to forecast outcomes and resource demands.
Western Canada is experiencing a dramatic increase in interactions between urban wildfires and the built environment. When emergency responders identify new infrastructural or policy risks during the process of activating resilience opportunities, GIS asset management software and enterprise GIS for infrastructure ensure that the most efficient evacuation options are provided to municipalities at the most cost-effective range.
RWI is testing a web-based, 6D visual shared interface that lets users directly manipulate key variables and scenarios to forecast energy security and resilience events through the lenses of climate and human impact, grid efficiency, infrastructure investments, decentralized energy resources, policy adoption, vulnerable populations, emergency response, and other hyper-localized community attributes — leveraging spatial analytics for infrastructure to turn complex data into actionable insights.
Emerging economies surrounding the energy transition are rapidly developing worldwide. A hydrogen economy is being established in the province of Alberta, with multiple related projects and municipalities transitioning to 100% hydrogen fuel cell transit fleets. However, establishing such an economy requires a risk-aware and resilient approach, including planning for the necessary training and standardized certifications. We helped prepare the hydrogen workforce in Alberta by generating a vision for a hydrogen-powered Alberta of 2030 and formulating a comprehensive, layered overview of potential risks to inform the development of standardized provincial training modules using infrastructure optimization software.
Utility infrastructure data and networks can improve human and community outcomes, inform emergency responders, design AI-based emergency communications systems, and accelerate evacuation using a condensed IIoT. To validate the potential of Itron’s Smart City and IIoT, RWI synthesized an area of Silicon Valley’s utility infrastructure, created an accurate synthetic population of commuters with behavioural attributes, and then triggered a ‘synthetic earthquake’ to observe human response, infrastructure impact, and emergency response with the help of enterprise GIS for infrastructure to anchor every asset in space and time.
Space-weather-related failures related to increased solar activity can negatively impact the electrical grid with little notice. Assessing and mitigating the vulnerability of people and at-risk infrastructure requires transdisciplinary collaboration and novel ways of converging and visualizing various data sets related to large, continental swaths of grid infrastructure. RWI launched its HoloDeck in 2022 during a weather-to-power grid simulation organized by Orion Space Solutions, the National Science Foundation, and the Convergence Hub for the Exploration of Space Science (CHESS), simulating the impact of space weather on a synthetic grid of the entire northeastern corridor of the United States using robust GIS asset management software and spatial analytics for infrastructure.
Cascading disasters are challenging to plan for, as there is little support from historical or traditional data sources for the unprecedented climate or health scenarios facing many communities. There are a variety of interlocking factors to consider, including multi-hazard risks, the timing and sequence of disasters, as well as the domino effect of infrastructure and human vulnerabilities in cascading failures. RWI created a Synthetic Twin as selected by EPRI’s Incubatenergy® Labs Challenge to enhance insights and sandbox resilience needs during unprecedented, dual-disaster conditions: a combined power outage alongside an outbreak of COVID-19, using infrastructure optimization software to model infrastructure performance under stress.
The Department of Defense (DOD) is facing unique challenges and opportunities surrounding its energy transition, including critical mission readiness, sustainability, and resilience. Solving these unique issues requires a collaborative, hyper-localized approach through interconnected models. RWI and the Electric Power Research Institute partnered as part of the AFWERX Showcase to create a virtual twin sandbox modelled for USAF Bases to support decision-making with quantified impacts and outcomes, using enterprise GIS for infrastructure and GIS asset management software to ensure mission-critical assets are optimized spatially and operationally.