Two THUAS GameLab students are working on Rijkswaterstaat's InnovA58 project. They organised a meeting of various project stakeholders at GameLab to help shape the Digital Twin they are developing.
Commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat, GameLab is developing a digital twin of the Low Tech Campus. The Low Tech Campus is one of the testing grounds in Rijkswaterstaat's Living Lab InnovA58 innovation project. It is an innovation site near the Kloosters parking area on the A58 in the municipality of Oirschot, near Eindhoven.
The Low Tech Campus testing ground covers approximately 500–1000 hectares around the Kloosters parking area on the A58, locally known as the hamlet of Straten. Among other challenges, this area faces climate effects that affect its water balance. The digital twin should help visualise these challenges and contribute to future solutions. The idea is for it to run in Innova58's innovation pavilion, where road users can interact with it.
Digital Twin
It was up to the students to explain exactly what a digital twin is and what benefits it offers: visualising a physical area, for example, and running scenarios within it. This is much cheaper, more accessible and less time-consuming than doing everything at the location itself.
The area's context and history were outlined by Stan Kerkhofs, Living Lab specialist at Corporate Innovatie Programma. He is the commissioning client on behalf of Rijkswaterstaat. In the ensuing discussion, we outlined a vision and framework, took initial steps towards defining the short- and long-term scope, and agreed concrete next steps.
The digital twin must provide insight into the area's water balance and support climate scenarios. The discussion also established that it should be an extensible tool that can be replicated for other environments. It must visualise experiments and the consequences of interventions and weather conditions. We need to use various data sources so that the data is as accurate as possible and can also be dynamic. We will investigate which specific sources can be selected.
It was a valuable meeting for gathering the different stakeholders' views and insights. The students gained a clear understanding of the assignment and its future value.
InnovA58 is a multi-year project to which GameLab and the stakeholders involved have committed. This creates healthy pressure and ambition for the students to lay the strongest possible foundations for this digital twin.
Stakeholder representatives included Rijkswaterstaat, TU Eindhoven, Boskalis and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK). This broad mix brought many perspectives to the table that matter to the area's development.
Rainald Isabella (The Hague University of Applied Sciences) and Roeland van der Velde (Leiden University of Applied Sciences) demonstrated the digital twin they are developing. An illustrator created visual minutes during the meeting.
Read more about the InnovA58 project.