The University of Nottingham has renewed its Living Lab collaboration with Glasgow-based climate technology firm IES, allowing students and staff access to cutting-edge digital twin technology until 2025.
The partnership provides universities, like Nottingham, with the technology to create digital twins of their campuses. These are fully scalable virtual models that behave in the same way as their real-world counterparts, which help collate data to inform decisions regarding where energy, carbon, capital, and operational savings can be made.
The university has been working with IES since 2013, and the digital twin of Nottingham’s Park campus, which includes 280 buildings, is used by academics to introduce interesting and diverse projects to their undergraduate offering in ‘decarbonisation of the built environment’. The collaboration also provides invaluable digital twin training and real-world climate tech experience to the next generation of engineers, architects, and technology professionals – setting them apart from other graduates.
Professor Mark Gillott, Chair in Sustainable Building Design at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment in the Faculty of Engineering, said: “As we plan to hit our carbon reduction targets, we are delighted that our strategy will continue to be informed by data gathered by IES’ ground-breaking technology.
Professor Mark Gillott
This initiative also allows our students to gain vital real-world experience, which they’ll carry with them into their professional lives, so we are delighted to be able to offer this training through the partnership.
Professor Mark Gillott, Faculty of Engineering
The collaboration has also seen both institutions work together on a variety of projects, including the award-winning Trent Basin, a low-energy community situated within Nottingham Waterside bounded by the River Trent. IES created an interactive platform to enable the community to visualise its energy data in real-time.
Don Mclean, IES founder and CEO, said: “IES is over the moon to be continuing to help the University of Nottingham carve out its route to net zero. It is also brilliant that, through this partnership, more of the university’s students will be trained in our pioneering digital twin technology.
Digital twins will continue to be the focal point of our work with the University of Nottingham over the coming years, and we look forward to providing them with the data and insight they need to make informed decisions about improving energy efficiency across the campus.
Don Mclean, IES founder and CEO
The University of Nottingham is due to host the 20th International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies from 15 to 17 August 2023, where Don McLean will be delivering a keynote speech on the use of digital wins for decarbonisation.