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Towards a Web of Digital Twins discussion
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33 Replies
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(the video was here originally, moved to first post)
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Network of Twins…
A potential case study is already out there, where the UK’s Royal Engineers conduct cross sector analysis of infrastructure primarily to understand criticality and vulnerability for disaster protection and relief, but this also create the basic framework that a network of twins could be hung from. Its been used in real situations in places like Nepal after the Earthquake and The British Virgin Islands after the Hurricane. In my part time role as a reservist i am involved in this and can assist if it is of interest?
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37 minutes ago, iain miskimmin said:
Network of Twins…
A potential case study is already out there, where the UK’s Royal Engineers conduct cross sector analysis of infrastructure primarily to understand criticality and vulnerability for disaster protection and relief, but this also create the basic framework that a network of twins could be hung from. Its been used in real situations in places like Nepal after the Earthquake and The British Virgin Islands after the Hurricane. In my part time role as a reservist i am involved in this and can assist if it is of interest?
Hi Iain – Many thanks for this. It does sound like an interesting example and it would be great to find out more (including any highlights that are directly relevant to today’s discussion or we could follow up on it 1-2-1)
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Hello everyone — looking forward to this conversation!
I hope the video is a good intro to the work the team at the ODI has been conducting, and more broadly to the work being done by the National Digital Twins programme and others.
As a quick introduction: I am the head of R&D at the Open Data Institute, with a professional background in various facets of open tech. I worked for many years in open standards (including several roles at and with the W3C), which is something that may transpire in some of the focus of the video. My team’s focus at the ODI is quite broad, but we mainly aim to create a more open and trustworthy data ecosystem, so a lot of our effort is put towards data infrastructure but also trust and ethics.
We’ve just updated our project page on Digital Twins with a slightly extended deck from the one you see in the video. There is also an annotated version with ample notes and links: https://theodi.org/project/rd-digital-twins/
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26 minutes ago, Guest Dr Max Mallia-Parfitt said:
Digital Twin standards…
In order for digital twins to reliably work across sectors and be interoperable we need to ensure that communications and data standards are adhered to!
[…]
How will this be managed for Digital Twins?
Completely agree – we are going to need standards. The good news is that there are actually a lot of existing standards we can build on and rely on, and some initiatives (like the DFTG) are doing important groundwork for more.
It’s important that we resist the urge to see Digital Twins as a single stack that needs to be standardised centrally. The power of digital twins is that it is an approach / methodology, not a single tech stack. That has an impact on how we create standards for it.
My hunch is that at this point, the most useful thing to do would be for practitioners to share which existing standards they are building on to create and connect twins – whether IoT standards for connectivity, W3C standards for discovery, BIM, etc.
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3 minutes ago, Guest Dr Max Mallia-Parfitt said:
Where is the live Q&A going to be held?
Have not received an email or link to zoom/goto/temas – please advise
Hi Max, the live Q&A is happening here, now. This “Digital Jam” is a discussion thread where you can pose questions and get near-immediate responses from Olivier and the DT Hub facilitation team. Please feel free to post your questions here as you have already started to do.
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6 minutes ago, Guest Charles Keen of Baikal AR said:
Hello Olivier, can you tell us how we can get [free] access to the data standards and indexes, please?
There are a number of standards being developed – I don’t think there is a single list anywhere yet (that sounds like something useful to develop). As for free access, we all know that it varies from forum to forum and from initiative to initiative: the W3C “web of things” standards are fully open, and the work done in the DFTG commons will be, I presume, publicly accessible.
Generally speaking, it will be quite important that standards for digital twins are developed as openly as possible to create greatest impact. The ODI has been creating a guidebook on that topic, which I encourage all to use: https://standards.theodi.org/
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That was a really interesting talk.
Northumbrian Water explored some similar themes at our Innovate East event last year.
Some of the outcomes/discussions points are below:
Standards need to be simple and broadly applicable. We don’t want a high barrier for adoption
- Core mandatory data items (as few and simple as possible)
- Optional but standardised data items (e.g. BIM/Uniclass)
- Any other data items (flexible and extendable standards)
Aim to keep the data sharing as simple as possible – how many types of data do we need? What level needs to be shared?
- Time Series Data – e.g. temperature sensor readings
- Event Data – e.g. an engineer visit, a status change
- Configuration or Meta Data – e.g. date of manufacture
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43 minutes ago, Nicholas said:
Hi Iain – Many thanks for this. It does sound like an interesting example and it would be great to find out more (including any highlights that are directly relevant to today’s discussion or we could follow up on it 1-2-1)
Hello Nicholas,
be great to follow this up. drop me a message and we’ll share some of the details and work done so far.
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2 minutes ago, Guest Dr Max Mallia-Parfitt said:
I agree in part, but when it comes to data excahnge there has to be a confirmed standard that is extensible, otherwise the benifit of the data exchange will be minimal and people will continue to use ‘Air Gapped’ systems due to their concirn over what data is being shared.
One of the things which our research hints at, is that we may not be seeing (only) direct data connectivity between twins, but in many cases there will be pooling/aggregation of higher level data by intermediaries.
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2 minutes ago, Andrew Myers said:
That was a really interesting talk.
Northumbrian Water explored some similar themes at our Innovate East event last year.
Some of the outcomes/discussions points are below:
Standards need to be simple and broadly applicable. We don’t want a high barrier for adoption
- Core mandatory data items (as few and simple as possible)
- Optional but standardised data items (e.g. BIM/Uniclass)
- Any other data items (flexible and extendable standards)
Aim to keep the data sharing as simple as possible – how many types of data do we need? What level needs to be shared?
- Time Series Data – e.g. temperature sensor readings
- Event Data – e.g. an engineer visit, a status change
- Configuration or Meta Data – e.g. date of manufacture
Agree.
I noted the emphasis on ‘purpose’ in the GE definition – we also explored this with partners at Innovate East. It is clear that the need for common understanding (if not actually a standard) starts with defining the purpose and value.
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2 minutes ago, olivierthereaux said:
One of the things which our research hints at, is that we may not be seeing (only) direct data connectivity between twins, but in many cases there will be pooling/aggregation of higher level data by intermediaries.
The need for standards and protocols starts is driven initially by a need to connect sub-systems, rather than to enable an extensive web of systems. If we think about VCRs (apparently the go to case study for standards), it was important from an ecosystem point of view to develop and adopt standards, not from a wider connectivity point of view. So, if I buy a digital twin of a pump (ideally provided alongside the physical asset), I need to know it will plug into my exiting digital twin of my pumping station, and to my network digital twin. We can then in time scale from there to an infrastructure level.
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3 minutes ago, Chris Jones (NWG) said:
Agree.
I noted the emphasis on ‘purpose’ in the GE definition – we also explored this with partners at Innovate East. It is clear that the need for common understanding (if not actually a standard) starts with defining the purpose and value.
Thanks Chris and Andrew. I think that you have been doing some interesting work to look at connections between twins in different sectors/areas (or twins that connect across these sectors). Are there any specific thoughts on what might help networks of cross-sector twins?
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4 minutes ago, Chris Jones (NWG) said:
The need for standards and protocols starts is driven initially by a need to connect sub-systems, rather than to enable an extensive web of systems.
This is incredibly important, and I agree that the first connections will need to be between similar twins and relevant sub-systems. The whole approach (and I hope what the talk conveys) is that over time, these connections will grow and scale up to be a whole web.
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2 minutes ago, Nicholas said:
Thanks Chris and Andrew. I think that you have been doing some interesting work to look at connections between twins in different sectors/areas (or twins that connect across these sectors). Are there any specific thoughts on what might help networks of cross-sector twins?
Hello Nicholas. As I mentioned – finding that common purpose. As Olivier mentioned in his excellent presentation, the greatest value is likely to be from cross sector connections but these will be the most difficult to engineer and will require some imagination as to how the costs and benefits are shared. I can see that in time new business models will emerge to enable this, and digital twins will themselves be an useful tool in designing, testing and operating those new business models.
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