DIGITAL TWINS-definition

What is a digital twin?

Concepts and Applications

In a few words:

“It is a virtual model of a process, a product or a service.” [1]

According NASA:

“It is an integrated multiphysics, multiscale, probabilistic simulation of an as-built vehicle or system that uses the best available physical models, sensor updates, fleet history, etc., to mirror the life of its corresponding flying twin.” [2]

According Institute for Information Management in Engineering (IMI):

“It is a virtual representation, an embodiment of an asset of any type, material or non-material – including everything from power turbines to services and maintenance.” [3]

According Gartner:

“A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world entity or system. The implementation of a digital twin is an encapsulated software object or model that mirrors a unique physical object, process, organization, person or other abstraction. Data from multiple digital twins can be aggregated for a composite view across a number of real-world entities, such as a power plant or a city, and their related processes.” [4]

In our words:

A system composed by a model powered by data to generate useful insights.

A model can be anything, from a 3D diagram of a building to an equation of motion, including stochastic equations, algorithms and so on. It only matters the model be able to capture the aspects that contribute to answer your questions. The best model is the simplest one that solves your problem. We are talking about a software implementation able to represent the key aspects of your system or process. Automation of stimulus and analysis is also very important to be able to obtain the benefits of the development of a digital twin. It is a powerful tool to support the decision makers, once you can get a better vision of the future.

Applications:

There is a huge number of potential applications of the digital twins concept. As a rule of thumb, you need a digital twin if you need to have an insight about a future behavior. A few examples:

  • Systems Development
  • Manufacturing Analytics
  • Business Intelligence (BI)
  • Building Information Management
  • Predictive Maintenance
  • Health
  • Production forecasting

How can We help you?

We help you to accelerate the deployment of your custom digital twin application. With our framework, you can easily launch an application that runs on the cloud, creating functional digital twins that automatically collect, consolidate and analyze data, generating meaningful insights presented in amazing dashboards. And if you need assistance in any step of your project, our team will be glad to help.

 If you have any question, or just would like to say hi, don’t hesitate to contact us using the form below.