UK Digital Twin Centre Opens in Belfast

A Digital Twin is a dynamic virtual representation (‘twin’) of a physical asset, process, or system, bridging the physical and digital worlds. They turn data into real-time insights that can optimise performance, reduce costs, and predict outcomes before they happen. Since funding for the project was announced, Digital Catapult has brought together industry and innovators to identify adoption barriers and strategic interventions. 

At the Centre’s opening, the project’s co-investing industry partners – Artemis Technologies, Spirit AeroSystems, and Thales UK – utilised the cutting-edge facilities, including the 360-degree immersive space and advanced technology lab, to demonstrate how digital twins are helping to solve complex operational challenges. These early-stage use cases emphasise the power of cross-sector collaboration to create scalable, practical solutions while building expertise that can be shared across industries, ultimately improving product design, building supply chain resilience, and decarbonising operations. 

Programmes delivered by the UK Digital Twin Centre will help businesses across the UK to demystify, demonstrate, and deploy digital twins. With expert support, test environments and tools to experiment and validate, combined with shared learnings from industry use cases, it offers a practical route to adoption. The Centre has convened capabilities across digital twins six enabling technology areas - intelligence, data services, immersive and UX, cyber-physical systems, integration, and security - to make this emerging technology more accessible and interoperable across sectors and suppliers. 

"The UK Digital Twin Centre marks a major step for Belfast, driving innovation in high-growth sectors like advanced manufacturing," said the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Micky Murray. "Through the Belfast Region City Deal and with Digital Catapult’s UK-wide reach, we’re connecting our SMEs to a powerful network, unlocking access to new markets, collaboration opportunities, and cutting-edge technologies. This will boost local businesses, create high-skilled jobs, and drive real economic impact for the region."