Connecting climate risk to real infrastructure decisions

Multiple infrastructure networks. One shared view of climate resilience. Turning siloed data into coordinated action

Connected Places Catapult

Connected Places Catapult is the UK's innovation accelerator for transport, construction and data infrastructure. Part of the Innovate UK Catapult Network, they connect SMEs, enterprises, government and investors to help new technologies reach the market and scale in the UK.

consortium partners

sectors connected

Zero

onboarding time into Round 2

CReDO is a connected digital twin of critical national infrastructure. It helps operators understand how climate hazards cascade across interconnected systems, from electricity substations to water networks and telecoms exchanges. The platform had to make highly complex data genuinely useful to people with very different levels of technical fluency, within a compressed timeline.

Thunk designed and built the MVP interface. CReDO passed its funding Stage Gate, went into real-world trials, and we were selected to continue the work.

Before

Infrastructure operators plan resilience network by network. The interconnectivity between systems wasn’t mapped or analysed.

When a storm takes out an electricity substation, the water company downstream loses pumping capacity, and the telecoms exchange loses its backup. Nobody owned the view of the cascading impact.

Each operator could see its own assets and nobody could see the dependencies between them

The platform needed to present multi-layered geospatial and modelling data in a way that supported real decision-making, not just analysis

Users ranged from infrastructure engineers to senior stakeholders with very different data fluency

A working MVP had to reach a Stage Gate review on a compressed timeline

After

The MVP was delivered on time, passed its Stage Gate, and went into real-world trials across multiple infrastructure organisations.

Thunk was selected to work on Round 2, as a direct result of the continuity and trust built during the MVP. We started with no onboarding, because the team already knew the platform, the consortium and the users.

An interface combining geospatial hazard data, asset data and cascade modelling across sectors

Led all User Journey 1 research, design, and front-end build

A production front end in React and TypeScript, against the consortium's API layer

Contributed to the Product Requirements Document, providing a structured foundation for future phases

What we did

Started from what existed.

Reviewed the prior research, wireframes and product strategy before designing anything new.

Tested with the people who'd use it.

Low-fidelity prototypes in front of infrastructure professionals, early, to find the complexity before it got expensive.

Built it for real.

React and TypeScript against the consortium's API layer, not a clickable prototype handed over for someone else to interpret.

Worked across four organisations.

UK Power Networks, CPC, CMCL and STFC, balancing delivery pace against research rigour.

There was so much research behind their challenge that the project simply decided to take it on. They gave us the evidence behind one of the three options we were weighing, which narrowed the scope and let us put limited resources where they would have the highest impact.

Ana Nunez Lopez, Operations Director, Connected Places Catapult

Our process for Connected Places Catapult

A disciplined hunt for value — the structure to explore the unknown without the usual cost of getting it wrong.

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