How SEDIMARK relates to Digital Twins

A digital twin is at its highest level, an architectural construct that is enabled by a combination of technology streams such as IoT (Internet of Things), Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, Fog Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Machine Learning and Big Data. Analytics.

The digital twin concept is based on the fact that every physical part has a virtual part that is conceptually, structurally and functionally the same as the physical part. The concept of Digital Twins dates to the 1970s, used by NASA in the Apollo 13 mission. Nowadays Digital Twins are used in various industries, being a key concept in realizing the communication mechanism between the physical and virtual worlds using data.

The primary use case for Digital Twin is asset performance, utilization, and optimization. Digital Twin enables monitoring, diagnostic and forecasting capabilities for a specific use case.

Examples of Digital Twin application scenarios are described in the following:

• Digital Twin for creating 3D modelling of digital objects from physical objects. This use case is a critical success factor for smart manufacturing initiatives.
• Digital Twin is used in factories to identify symptoms with constant monitoring and find the root causes of production problems.
• In healthcare, Digital Twin is used for simulation purposes so that doctors can perform risky operations first in a simulated environment before performing the operation on a real patient.
• Urban planners use Digital Twin initiatives using virtual models to improve city conditions in a proactive manner. This approach can reduce complexity and simplify processes for planners.

Digital Twins and Data Spaces

Digital twins must be considered in their relationship to data spaces. A larger overview is therefore required, including systemic oversight, and supporting infrastructure.

International Data Spaces (IDS) provides data space technologies and concepts for various application domains that enable standardized data exchange and integration in a trusted environment. The International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) is a non-profit organization that promotes IDS architecture as an international standard in a variety of fields, including healthcare, mobility, agriculture, and more.

It is expected that in the medium term, in strong relation to specific requirements, collaboration solutions with centralized data storage in one or more clouds and distributed data storage with efficient data processing will be realized by combining the Digital Twins with Dataspaces.

With help of the use-cases provided within SEDIMARK, the project could elaborate a concrete strategy in which this relationship between Digital Twins and Dataspaces can prove of real value.