Case Study · Flagship
Larne Harbour: Every building. Every sensor. One harbour.
A live 3D digital twin of Larne Harbour that turns building sensors, energy meters, and harbour operations into a single operator view — built to drive the harbour to net zero.
Client
Larne Harbour
Sector
Ports & infrastructure
Location
Northern Ireland
Focus
Digital twin · net zero
Overview
The Larne Harbour Digital Twin is an operational web platform for the people who run the harbour and the stakeholders who care about its environmental performance. It fuses three things into one interface: a 3D model of the harbour rendered in CesiumJS; real-time sensor data from LoRaWAN, Loxone, and building IoT endpoints covering electricity, gas, heating, cooling, water, solar, temperature, humidity, and CO₂e; and operational context including vessel movements, ferry activity, camera feeds, tide, and wind.
Challenge
Larne Harbour, like every UK port, is under pressure to decarbonise. The operators need to see energy use building by building in context rather than in spreadsheets, explain progress to regulators, tenants, and the public, decide where to invest next, and prove savings using a real measurement and verification method — not guesses. Traditional building-management dashboards are flat, siloed, and built for engineers. The harbour needed a view built for operators, managers, and visitors — spatial, live, and readable at a glance.
Solution
A cinematic 3D operator view of the harbour, running on a serverless AWS back-end and a LoRaWAN sensor network across the site.
3D Harbour — the centrepiece
Navigable CesiumJS scene with buildings coloured by real-time energy consumption, clickable sensor waypoints, camera waypoints with live feeds, and building modals with floor plans, energy charts, and drill-downs.
Sensors & analytics
Per-sensor charts, consumption-vs-generation dashboards, carbon intensity, net emissions, and anomaly detection that learns each sensor’s normal profile and flags drift.
Evidence-based net zero
A defined measurement and verification method underpins the savings claims — not marketing arithmetic. Exportable PDF reports for stakeholders and regulators.
Results
- Spreadsheets replaced by a spatial operator view — energy rendered on the real geometry of the harbour
- Sub-second telemetry latency across the LoRaWAN sensor network
- Measurement-and-verification-grade evidence for decarbonisation investment decisions
- Serverless back-end — scales to thousands of sensors without a data centre
Deployment at a glance
- Sensor nodes24
- Coverage3.2 km²
- Latency< 900 ms
- Radio868 MHz
Technology stack
- CesiumJS (3D geospatial)
- AWS Serverless (SAM)
- Lambda · DynamoDB · IoT Core
- Timestream (sensor history)
- LoRaWAN sensor network
- Loxone controllers
- Next.js / React frontend
Partners & funding
- DTFF (Digital Transformation Flexible Fund)
- Invest NI
- Digital Catapult NI
Planning a digital twin?
Ports, estates, industrial sites — we take on a small number of these a year.
Talk to us