Simultaneous simulation: a comprehensive approach to climate risk

Simulation is proving to be a key tool in anticipating risk and increasing resilience for the future. By predicting and assessing potential disruption, it can help us find the most effective solutions with the best return on investment.

AtkinsRéalis SIMULATOR is an integrated suite of software tools designed to address climate resilience across cities, transportation corridors, seaports and now, airports. The general concept involves building a digital twin of the subject, and creating a simulation of each day until the end of the century. The simulation is informed by the latest projections on climate change. It identifies operational disruptions like flooding, intensifying storms and extreme heat. It builds a picture of exactly how disruptions will manifest, how significant they will be, and the knock-on effects.

SIMULATOR calculates the resultant resilience and associated costs of a range of options, allowing clients to find the best solution within a given budget. It enables them to create long-term investment plans for resilience over time. It staggers projects to minimise disruption, optimising passenger experience and generating the best value.

The user journey

Interaction with stakeholders is an essential driver for building the right tool for the job. In a series of recent aviation workshops, we presented a prototype of our SIMULATOR for Airports tool. Members of the insurance industry brought up bird strikes, which pose a significant, and increasing, insurance risk for airport operators and airlines. Leveraging the digital twin concept, we added simulation of turkey vulture migratory patterns – a common species around our case study airport. We found that increasing temperatures and a shorter migratory season would be likely to reduce risk. But, combined with increasing air travel and increasing bird populations, the net risk will increase.

Having our ear to the ground in this way ensures our product is relevant and fit for purpose. It positions clients’ needs front and centre of design.

There are many tools on the market that assess climate risk, using maps and flood models to identify vulnerable locations. There are also tools that assess airport efficiency, modelling the movement of people through security checks, for example. We’re focused on bringing all this together, developing a tool that looks at risk through the lens of the user. Instead of focusing on a specific geographical location or airport function, we simulate people, aircraft, and cargo simultaneously, examine the end-to-end journey and identify the full spectrum of possible disruptions throughout.

We don’t stop at take-off. We simulate the flight and landing, incorporating mid-air issues like increased turbulence, as well as the impact of associated delays and departures.

Beyond aviation

In order to solve problems effectively, we need to look outside the airport. An airport does not exist in isolation. It is part of a bigger ecosystem. For example, if a transmission station goes out half a mile from the airport, public transport is affected and passenger journeys to the airport are disrupted. If cruise passengers are delayed arriving into an airport, it affects the cruise industry.

We could look at each airport as a single challenge and generate a single simulation. But to solve the real problem, we must break out of this siloed approach. The AtkinsRéalis model encompasses events inside and outside the airport. We look beyond aviation to see the full picture.

SIMULATOR for Airports is our most ambitious simulator so far. It encompasses the complexities associated with interacting flows of passengers, planes, ground operations and external assets. This deep simulation highlights that often the city, the county, and other stakeholders, can have an outsized role in ensuring the airport’s success.

An integrated future

The complexity of SIMULATOR for Airports opens up the exciting possibility of a full global air simulator, which could serve multiple industries and stakeholders. For an airport, we could extract reports from the global model that focus on airport activity and incorporate the elements that will affect its operations. For an insurance client, we could present a broader picture of risk, focusing on an entire region, its specific climate hazards, and the impact of those on its infrastructure networks and business operations.

Whatever the scope, future simulations are moving towards a model that encompasses all relevant details to create a comprehensive and bespoke picture of risk. In future, the real value will come from understanding the big picture by examining the intricacy and interconnectedness of every element of the system. Global climate problems are only going to get worse, and the repercussions across different locations and sectors will be felt more extensively. We need to simulate the entire system to work out ways around the specific challenges coming our way.