Digital Twins 2035: event round-up
Following the publication of techUK's green paper on the future of digital twinning in June 2025, the webinar examined the art of the possible by 2035, the convergence of technologies creating unprecedented opportunity, and the practical steps needed to turn a bold vision into reality.
We were proudly joined by:
- George Economides, Department for Transport
- Erwin Frank-Schultz, IBM
- Heather Xiao, Horizon Zero
- Simon Evans, Arup
- Mark Ferguson, InterSystems
- Katrina Thompson, Digital Twin Centre (Digital Catapult)
Presentation by Erwin Frank-Schultz, IBM
Erwin opened with a forward-looking personal perspective on the future of digital twins as intelligent, connected, real-time virtual ecosystems, drawing on his experience in the energy sector.
Digital twins will scale to city and national level through a federated approach. Rather than a single monolithic twin, the vision is a network of connected twins integrating transport, energy, water, and more. The UK's federated approach is the right one, and the hope is that government uses this infrastructure for long-term decision making.
AI-driven semantic connectivity will enable heterogeneous systems to integrate faster by converting data between formats, provided there is a strong understanding of the underlying metadata. Advances in edge computing and the transition from 5G to 6G will generate vastly more data at the edge, feeding twins capable of grid balancing, emissions mitigation, and autonomous infrastructure management.
Opaque box modelling is also on the rise, with digital twins increasingly incorporating AI components trained on real-world data. Hybrid approaches combining transparent and opaque models will accelerate the speed of modelling but must be balanced by robust governance and validation frameworks. Open-source projects like GridFM are already pointing the way.
Finally, human-like behaviour simulation is becoming possible through agent-based models that capture preferences, habits, adaptive decision-making, and social interactions. Combined with physical system models, these hybrid approaches will enable higher-fidelity simulations across much larger domains than previously possible. Advances in quantum computing may further unlock modelling at a granular level that is currently computationally infeasible.
Presentation by George Economides, Department for Transport
George presented on the journey from question to delivery in digital twinning, drawing on the government's official definition and the work of the Department for Transport (DfT).
The transport sector has employed digital twins to deliver value for decades, with key use cases spanning network management and crisis response, infrastructure management and resilience, and fundamental change driven by new modes such as autonomous and unmanned vehicles. The DfT's digital twin programme, in place since 2023, is aligned with the Transport AI Action Plan, with a vision and roadmap to 2035.
Highlights and key programmes:
- Working with the National Digital Twin Programme (NDTP) to contribute to Integration Architecture ontologies, with funded work through the AMRC on cross-modal transport ontologies.
- The TransiT programme on digital twins for transport decarbonisation, and a £5 million crisis and resilience digital twin research programme co-funded by DfT and EPSRC, including a crisis response digital twin proof of concept.
- Collaboration with 38 organisations to understand information needs across the full lifecycle of built environment assets, and the FUSION dataset, commissioned with HM Treasury, collecting multimodal movement data to understand how different people choose to travel, with anonymised versions available for wider use.
- The Transport Research and Innovation Grant (TRIG) has a dozen projects already underway covering transport resilience, integrated transport, and emerging technology convergence.
- A commitment to invest £2 million in digital twin projects over the next four years, alongside a focus on building digital skills through the Transport Data Action Plan.
Panel discussion
Question 1: By 2035, what sectors do you think will be most transformed by digital twins, and what might that transformation look like in practice?
The pace of change makes precise prediction difficult, but the panel agreed that retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and supply chains are among the sectors likely to see the greatest transformation. Computing power will look fundamentally different by 2035, and in practice transformation will manifest as huge increases in the volume, diversity, and use of real-time data from disparate sources. Sectors already using digital twins, such as aerospace, will significantly expand how they deploy them.
Question 2: What capabilities will digital twins unlock that seem out of reach today?
The biggest advances will come at the convergence of technologies. In drug research, for example, modelling at a quantum level could transform what is currently possible. In energy, the conversation has already shifted from the individual digital twin towards connected digital twins at a system level, exemplified by the work of the National Energy System Operator (NESO). The panel also noted that the term "digital twin" has become somewhat diluted, with a growing preference for framing this as cyber-physical integration: a methodology for better use of data across the lifecycle of a system, where data sharing at scale is the highest point of friction.
Question 3: Systems and processes developed for sector-specific projects can sometimes be transferred elsewhere. Do you have any examples, and what does this tell us about the broader value of digita
The Digital Twin Centre's work across maritime, aerospace, and defence illustrates how technical expertise in data modelling, interoperability, simulation, and machine learning can be built up collaboratively and shared across domains. The key insight is that these approaches are less about the specific sector and more about how you structure and use your data. Systems, processes, and standards that are not tied to a single use case can be repurposed elsewhere, and learning together avoids repeating the same mistakes.
Question 4: Open Banking demonstrated that cross-sector data sharing is achievable. How can we apply lessons from that to digital twins, and what security and privacy challenges need to be addressed?
Open Banking's success was built on API standardisation, data model standardisation, and standardised security protocols that enabled interoperability without friction. The same principles apply to digital twins. Trust frameworks are critical, including mature consent frameworks, accreditation mechanisms, and clear liability rules. An ecosystem mindset is essential, as everyone has a role to play in contributing to the overall outcome. Regulation, as seen through the FCA and DBT's role in open finance, can serve as an accelerator for innovation rather than a barrier, and as digital twins become more mainstream there is a real opportunity to ensure regulation drives interoperability and trust at scale.
Question 5: How should digital twin development connect to the UK's Industrial Strategy and broader economic goals?
The areas of greatest opportunity are those involving major system change, particularly in energy where multiple sectors interact, and infrastructure must transform significantly over time. Even small optimisations in decision-making can generate outsized value at that scale. However, the panel cautioned against building digital twins as an end in themselves. The right question is always what outcome you are looking to achieve, and whether a digital twin is genuinely the answer. They are expensive to build, and for many decisions existing tools are good enough. They should be reserved for the big problems that cannot be solved without them. As one panellist put it: digital twins for any organisation are a journey, not a destination.
Question 6: How do we move from sector-specific digital twins to interoperable ones? What role does data standardisation play, and is the UK making enough progress?
The value of digital twins will never be realised at the asset level. It will be won at the sector, cross-sector, or national level. The NDTP was created to unlock this, and progress is being made by aligning around common technical and social principles. But digital twins are a sociotechnical challenge. While technical interoperability is increasingly solvable, the governance dimensions, including scalable legal frameworks, trust frameworks, and contractual complexity, remain more uncertain. The ability to codify and scale legal frameworks for these technologies is a critical frontier that the sector has yet to fully navigate.
Question 7: What are the biggest barriers organisations need to overcome, and how should they be addressed?
The biggest challenge is cultural rather than technical. Unpacking the genuine business benefits, helping organisations ask the right questions, and navigating the breadth of skills required are all significant hurdles, and few businesses possess all the necessary capability in-house. The scale of the options available can be paralysing. Cost and vendor lock-in compound the challenge, as does a shortage of trained and experienced staff. At the heart of all of it is business benefit: that is the starting point, and the only sustainable basis for investment.
Final Messages from panellists
Erwin Frank-Schultz, IBM: Start with the decision you want to improve, then ask whether a digital twin is the right solution. If a cheaper solution exists, use it.
Heather Xiao, Horizon Zero: Adopt an ecosystem mindset. Ask what role your digital twin plays, how it fits with others, and what customer outcome it is contributing to.
Simon Evans, Arup: There's great work happening across industry, so engage with the ecosystem and learn from others.
Mark Ferguson, InterSystems: Get your data orchestration right before you start. It makes scaling significantly easier.
Katrina Thompson, Digital Twin Centre: We need to see more collaboration across the ecosystem.
Sara Duodu
Sara joined techUK in October 2025 as Programme Manager for Quantum and Digital Twins.
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