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Improved insight into safety through digital twin Zeeland

The Zeeland Safety Region, in cooperation with the five southern safety regions, is developing a so-called digital twin of Zeeland. In this digital copy of the province, data is cleverly linked and analysed to provide insight into the various risks within the area. This creates a 'real time' safety picture of the towns and villages in Zeeland. This enables earlier identification of dangers and makes crisis management more efficient. The tool supports the safety region in advising municipalities on safety issues, in making plans to prepare for crisis management, training and exercises, and in responding to incidents.

South6

The six southern safety regions work together within the partnership Zuid6 in the field of ICT innovations, among other things. Due to the enormous development that the use of data and 3D images is currently undergoing, these regions have jointly taken the initiative to develop this digital twin for numerous relevant insights into the field of safety. All of this in 3D, because that makes it easier to assess the impact of an incident. Think of a fire in a childcare centre at a location within a high-rise building.

Zeeland Safety Region as test area

The Zeeland Safety Region has set itself up as a test area. It cooperates with the company Argaleo, by applying its software platform Digitwin. On the one hand it looks at the information needs of the different processes within a safety region. On the other hand, Digitwin is tested as the 'front end' of the regional Safety Information Exchange (VIK). The VIK is meant as an information source for professionals working in the field of public order and safety at municipalities, environment services, provinces, water boards and Rijkswaterstaat. By having the same image of a disaster and sharing this information via the VIK, cooperation between these chain partners is stimulated. This benefits safety in an area.

The insights we gain from the digital twin give us a much better picture of the environment around an incident. This helps us to take the right measures before and during an incident'. So says Pepijn de Smet (Project Leader and Information Manager at Zeeland Safety Region)

Locations with safety indication

Concrete application

Concrete applications are developed together with the end user. For example, the search for safe locations for the reception of asylum seekers or the ability to quickly analyse the immediate surroundings during a fire. An important concept that is on the drawing board is the development of an evacuation module. The Zeeland Safety Region is working with Rijkswaterstaat on this. Using this module, professionals will soon be able to calculate the most efficient and effective routes for getting people out of an area in the event of an explosion or flood, for example.

It is important to get rid of all those paper evacuation plans. It is extremely important in this day and age to be able to share these plans, methods and scenarios easily with the responsible administrators and the organisations that have to implement measures, such as the fire brigade, police, defence and national authorities. Digitwin is going to help us a lot with this'. Marcel Matthijsse (Advisor Crisis Management at the Safety Region Zeeland)

Area analysis

Scaling up

The tool is now being used and tested by the Zeeland safety region. The intention is to take the results with them and scale them up to the other southern safety regions. By doing so, these regions hope to take a nice step towards a shared information supply of high quality in which the same and good safety image will help to improve the cooperation between the regions and with the chain partners.

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