Sim-Ci: Enabling resilient utilities networks for the energy transition

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Sim-CI started as an innovation breeding ground from one of The Netherlands’ biggest utilities network operators: Alliander, who are responsible for 5,7 million end-user connections, 88.000km of electricity cable, and 43.000km of gas pipes. With their focus being the middle- and low-voltage energy grid, they are the biggest in The Netherlands.

One of the big challenges of the 21^st century for The Netherlands comes from an increased population count, and a change in the way the energy network is being used. Electricity grids have to deal with a changed use due to heat pumps, EV’s, and traditionally ‘downstream’ connections that suddenly became ‘upstream’ connections due to the overwhelming popularity of solar power. Not only is the grid more heavily used, the wear and tear is much different, which means that assets that had a 50 year lifetime now might have a much shorter lifetime. The same goes for the gas network; with the advent of bio-gas and farms also producing combustible gas from animal by-products, the transport medium is being used in an entirely different way.

Individually, every owner of critical infrastructure is well aware of all these factors, but rarely are they aware of each other. Only recently the city of Apeldoorn was without gas for a long time due to a ruptured water mains, which caused mud to flow into the gas network. Cleaning and repairs were not only an inconvenience, but also: pricey,  dangerous, and most probably: preventable.

Sim-Ci aims to design resilient critical infrastructures, and to simulate and as such: prevent costly incidents to happen. Critical infrastructures such as gas, water, electricity, telecoms, and cyber all interact with each other, causing an N-quadratic amount of dependencies, and potential: cascade effects. What happens if the cooling water for a power plant fails?

GIS is a huge aspect of this mission. Challenges such as getting the data from all infrastructures, addressing the sensitivity in a secure; trusted zone; providing data for simulations; enriching data with public data such as bottom survey; addressing integration in highly scalable scientific models make this not just a GIS challenge, but a massive integration challenge as well. Utilising GIS the platform can be built scalable, provide data on-demand for virtually every simulation application; and assist in visualising these simulations; and even: whole newly designed cities with a resilient infrastructure.

This presentation highlights some of the reasons why Sim-Ci exists, and how GIS and the data within are the backbone for a much larger platform. The attendees will leave with the challenge to think of the implications of working with so many stakeholders, security considerations, and hopefully: motivation to consider their own contribution to a sustainable, resilient and safer environment.

The ArcGIS platform is used extensively at Sim-Ci; not just as visualisation, but also as platform to host various interfaces on to connect different types of simulation applications.