Transport for London (TfL) has partnered with digital twin startup Spinview to accelerate the organisation’s zero carbon railway goals for 2030.

The project ,funded by a government Smart Grant awarded to Spinview, will support the Mayor of London’s ambition for a zero-carbon railway and is also aimed at driving smarter, more efficient running of the capital’s train network.

The project will focus initially on the Piccadilly Line, as one of the Underground’s ‘Deep Tube’ lines, reaching as far as 30m below ground.

Spinview says its digital twin technology is able to capture and monitor tracks and tunnels, and provide data on noise and heat levels.

The project will be the first time that TfL will be able to view a digital model of its lines and assets, with the aim of gaining data and tools to identify safety issues and environmental pollutants and cut down on carbon and noise and heat emissions.

Spinview’s virtual model system VQecosystem allows employees and contractors to work from a virtual environment any time, as opposed to physically below ground during limited time slots.

This means that TfL will no longer be restricted to physically inspecting and surveying assets below ground between the engineering hours of 01:00-05:00 and instead will be able to conduct surveys, assess the health of a location and make decisions at any time through the Spinview interface.

Paul Judge, director of the Piccadilly Line Upgrade project, at TfL, said: “This partnership with Spinview offers us a really exciting opportunity to gain real-time access to our assets on the Underground network, many of which we can currently only inspect during engineering hours.

"Not only will using digital-twin technology support the smarter, more efficient maintenance of the railway, it will also enable us to more accurately monitor environmental challenges such as carbon emissions, noise levels and heat as we strive to do more to lessen our carbon footprint and help tackle the climate emergency.

He added: “This is another example of us working with a wide range of market innovators to stay at the forefront of technology.”

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