[David Roberts]

Hello DT world 🙂

So, looking at my profile it dawns on me that i actually landed here back in 2020, even posted in a couple of forums. Then work, and time seems to have escaped me and so here I am, years later, saying “hello” and really interested in how i still seem to find myself need to explain digital twins as if it was some strange alien concept to experienced and genuinely talented data specialist. I don’t know about you but i think i have found my way back here because of a slight change in the wind direction and perhaps things are starting to change?

So, and way…

• Who are you?
  • I’m a senior business analyst, via being an application developer and data modeller, a network administrator, IT trainer and once a long time ago a motorcycle courier.
• What is your industry and profession?
  • I have worked as a niche consultant, working in data, data science and digital transformation projects as a business analyst with a broad range of technical experience for over 15 years. Predominantly within the public sector across healthcare and defence.
• Where do you plan to use your new Digital Twin Knowledge? Personally/professionally?
  • tbh i feel like i use it daily, in the need to keep trying to promote the need to be aware of driving projects towards a greater awareness of the value of the digital twin, even as just a concept.
• Why have you decided to join the DTHub?
  • I joined a long time back as i was involved on the fringes of developing the DT for Defence white paper and was looking for support and information around the web.
• Have you participated in any of our meetups, or events?
  • many moons ago I think i did take part in an online miro call discussing the definition of a digital twin! Or perhaps it was a dream.
• Do you have any examples of work that you have done using Digital Twins?
  • sadly no, but i hope one day to be able to change this statement!

 

[David Roberts]

I think I would also agree, trying of be overly prescriptive in a tight definition of a Digital Twin could be counterproductive.

Digital Twins suffer from the same problem as Artificial Intelligence, as the English grammar goes the term is very simple and self-descriptive, but what it is trying to describe is very broad and complicated and so it just leads to an easy misuse of the term as it just “sounds” so simple.

Trying to tightly bind a detailed technical definition to a simple term will never remove the misuse and repeated misunderstanding.

I think I would be more interested in trying to define a spectrum of digital twin capabilities. Again, like AI, where we have Local, Broad and Extreme generalisation ability, perhaps in digital twins we could have tightly coupled and loosely coupled and then perhaps synthetic copies?

If we are striving for complex interconnectivity of digital twins from different sectors and representing different technologies and objects surely, we would be wanting to cast our net as wide as possible?