The Department for Trade and Business (DfTB) has taken significant steps in National Digital Twin Programme with the signing of two contracts for support in of its development.
It has recently a signed a six-month agreement worth £950,000 with Kainos Software for the further development of the information architecture, and another worth £200,000 with Belay for ontology development.
The programme is aimed at developing standards, processes and tools that as a foundation of a functioning market in digital twins and create growth, and to ensure that digital twins use technology and processes that are accessible to any organisation.
The programme is managed in-house, development and design outsourced to specialist providers.
The award notice for the Kainos contract says the company will be responsible for enhancing the capabilities and providing security measures for the information architecture, and managing the programme’s GitHub repository.
Components and codebase
Plans include the development of new components such as a policy management tool and a user-friendly interface for the information architecture, and releasing as much of the developed codebase as possible under the MIT licence for the re-use of software.
The award notice for the contract with Belay says the company will provide a team of ontologists to support the ongoing development of the information exchange system within the architecture with a common ontology – the naming and definition of different categories of information.
“The challenge is to ensure that the IES remains robust, scalable, and adaptable to the evolving needs of multiple sectors, while maintaining compatibility with existing standards and frameworks,” it says.
