Solving climate change requires us to fundamentally change many systems that drive our economy and impact our lives. We need adaptive strategies to account for the disruptive effects of rapid changes in government policy, consumer behaviour and technologies such as renewable energy and autonomous vehicles.

We need to be able to design and build systems that incorporate impacts on the environment – and optimise systems already in place – and we need to deal with enormous competing interests, disinformation, entrenched investments and human bias. We have a small window to get smart about smart cities. At a global scale. 

It’s a wicked problem. The good news is Deloitte’s Optimal Reality digital twin is all about solving wicked problems.

Digital twins are important technology for solving climate change

Digital twins link the physical and digital worlds, enabling us to:

• Look through a holistic lens of creating smarter cities to see how sectors like transport and energy must work together to reduce emissions
• Solve problems across complex, interconnected environments – allowing us to look at millions of possible scenarios and choose the right one
• Create feedback loops for decisioning that enable continuous improvement of complex systems.

Digital Twins originate from sectors such as aviation, transport and manufacturing that are a priority for climate change. The technologies have become mainstream and are now accessible to organisations that want to simulate their physical environment as a way to solve complex decarbonisation problems.

Introducing Optimal Reality
 

Optimal Reality (OR) is Deloitte’s digital twin capability based on simulation techniques pioneered in Formula One racing. We help organisations run millions of permutations on a digital replica of their network to drive optimal decision making within seconds to conduct trial and error – without the error. This enables us to solve problems related to preventing and adapting to climate change. Elements of our approach include:

• A world-class digital twin platform – We bring together a number of key technologies and a unique platform-based approach that provides us with a capability that is unmatched by other digital twins in the market.
• Industry apps that solve specific business problems – Optimal Reality combines digital twin technology with problem specific applications. This means that we leverage the power of the platform and can solve unique problems, specific to each individual clients’ wicked problems.
• A delivery capability powered by F1 thinking and mission control operations – Formula One has been one of the pioneering industries in digital twins over the past few decades. We’ve applied the lessons from how F1 has used real-time and historic race data, domain expertise and live weather data to improve race performance to the challenges we solve with OR.

Our vision for the approach is a connected reality, but creating smart city around connected industries, giving you a mission-control capability for solving strategic climate issues and making operational improvements. Our primary focus is on the transport and energy sectors – the largest source of emissions, as well as environmental issues such as air quality and noise. 

• We bring specific assets focused on tracking and reducing emissions as well as a platform architecture that can allows for easy extension to solve for new problems. Find out more in the Optimal Reality showcase.