Initiative explores whether data can help improve infrastructure safety

The ODI, a non-profit advocate of open data, has partnered with the charity Lloyd's Register Foundation (LRF), whose mission includes to protect the safety of life and property, to encourage infrastructure owners and operators to release information they hold in a project aimed at improving the safety of physical infrastructure.

The initiative, which has the backing of the Royal Academy of Engineering, will look to "identify how increasing access to data can help inform engineering design, monitor safety, and improve operations of key infrastructure". The ODI and LRF are to consult a range of engineering and safety organisations as part of their work.

"The consequences of unsafe infrastructure was seen in September this year, where 43 people were killed when a 220m (656ft) section of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa plunged 45m, along with dozens of vehicles," the ODI said. "Accidents like this could potentially be avoided if more data was shared, openly published and available on our built infrastructure, allowing structural problems to be identified and improvements to be made."

"For example, data on the design and maintenance of bridges could help drive greater investment in maintenance or improved designs; data about ships could be used to predict faults and create safer environments at sea through early interventions; data about drones or driverless cars could even help highlight safety risks," it said.

Simon Colvin, an expert in infratech – the integration of technology into infrastructure – at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that by exploring how data can be used to improve the safety of infrastructure, the initiative had the potential to highlight the value of data to serve the public good. She said it could serve to inform future projects on sharing data from infrastructure for other purposes and help break down information barriers that often exist between the business community, public sector and academic researchers.

LRF chief executive, professor Richard Clegg, said that most of the "huge amount of data" held by engineering companies is "currently not accessible". He said the charity will work with the ODI and industry to liberate data to provide "greater transparency over the safety of our national infrastructure".

Sir Nigel Shadbolt, co-founder and chairman at the ODI, said data about physical infrastructure "provides critical information about our environment that we can use to identify improvements and opportunities for better, safer, more efficient services". He said the work the ODI and LRF will engage in will explore how opening up access to data "would help the designers, operators and maintainers of our physical infrastructure keep us safe".

Professor Martyn Thomas CBE FREng, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said engineers "have a professional duty to ensure that their work does not expose anyone to avoidable risks" and that "the open sharing of data creates a good opportunity to improve safety".

Colvin said open data and data sharing within the infrastructure sector also has the potential to inform the development of a 'digital twin' of the UK's physical infrastructure. The UK government has set up the Digital Framework Task Group (DFTG) to, among other things, look into how a 'digital twin' could be developed.

The idea of establishing a 'digital twin' of the UK's transport, energy, water and telecoms networks was put forward by the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) last year. NIC chair Sir John Armitt said at the time that the development of a digital twin was "the next frontier for infrastructure planning".

In its report, the NIC said that a digital twin could "provide insights beyond what is currently seen with existing infrastructure models and can be used as a tool to aid decision making". The model could, for example, use big data and artificial intelligence to determine what changes need to be made to the way that the public uses transport if the population of London were to increase by 50% by 2050.

Once developed, the digital twin model could also be used to plan maintenance works on UK roads and railways in a way which minimises disruption to consumers, or to allow those planning to install new infrastructure to virtually 'overlay' their plans onto existing infrastructure, the NIC's report said.

"It is possible to envisage an overlap between the work on the 'digital twin' project and initiatives aimed at pooling data from infrastructure assets," Colvin said. "While a digital twin would allow gaps in infrastructure need to be understood more easily, future infrastructure planning from such mapping would be enhanced were more data made accessible to experts on how existing infrastructure is performing and whether improvements in its operation were possible."