The digital twin landscape is complex and fragmented. To unlock its full potential, we need a common language and a shared approach. The Gemini Framework provides just that.
As a product owner for the Gemini Framework, I’ve had the privilege of working with a talented team to create a tool that can truly revolutionize the way we approach digital twins. Inspired by the collaborative spirit of the DT Hub community, we’ve developed a framework that empowers organizations to connect, compare, and collaborate on their digital twin projects.
Two quotes have shaped my perspective as product owner of the Gemini Framework, building on our collaboration with Mott MacDonald. Mark Enzer’s widely cited mantra in the DT Hub community, “Collaborate on the rules, compete on the game,” captures our philosophy that organizations should unite around shared standards while maintaining market competition. This pairs powerfully with Ian Dunt’s observation on his Origin Story podcast that “we have this cultural antipathy towards recognising the beauty of co-operation between people” – a broader insight that resonates strongly in the business world, where collaborative achievements often go uncelebrated.
Fortunately, the DT Hub and wider digital twin community share a strong sense of common purpose and eagerness to collaborate. This collaborative spirit shines through in the valuable insights shared weekly on the Gemini Call. When developing the Gemini Framework, I made sure to keep this emphasis on the power of collaboration at its heart.
The Origins of the Gemini Framework
The Gemini Framework originated when the DT Hub team identified a community need for structured conceptual thinking around planning, building, and connecting digital twins. We started by revisiting the DT Hub’s mission statement: “…uniting the collective knowledge and diverse voices of experts to set the framework that will empower others to advance change and embrace connected digital twins within their own organisations.” The DT Hub vision captures this idea more succinctly: “To progress our society, economy and environment through collective innovation.”
From this emerged a vision for the Gemini Framework:
‘The Gemini Framework is a supporting structure, based on a system of principles, concepts and mechanisms, developed and curated through collective innovation, around which digital twins can be planned, built and connected to progress our society, economy and environment.
Gemini Framework Vision
It is guided by the governance and membership of the Digital Twin Hub and will empower others to advance change and embrace connected digital twins within their own organisations.
It uses a common language to underpin a web of connected concepts laid out in the domain of the Gemini Principles.”
Evolution of the Gemini Framework
After collaborating with key stakeholders and DT Hub governance to establish a unified approach, consultants from Mott MacDonald reviewed relevant content and assets to create a high-level ontology for the framework’s supporting structure.
The team conducted a comprehensive review of existing literature to examine previously developed digital twin reference architectures from industry and academia. This review incorporated key resources like the Gemini Papers and Information Management Framework materials (available for download from the DT Hub).
As a result of this exploratory and evaluative process, a taxonomy of the knowledge base was created. From that, the foundations of the framework wiki emerged with the Gemini Principles as the starting point for everything that follows, but also a reference architecture began to take shape as a method of visualising and documenting the various stages required in developing a digital twin.
The shape evolved as a structured representation of the data-value chain initially published in, and promoted by the Gemini papers, which underpins the ultimate purpose of any digital twin.
This gave us the basis of a series of separate, but connected, layers on the data journey, each of which contained a number of distinct functions and technologies, which were derived from collective knowledge gained from reviewing the existing reference architectures in available literature, reviewing digital twin case studies and expert knowledge of the digital twin space and available associated digital twin capabilities and technologies.
Each layer of the reference architecture represents a progressive step in the data-value chain. The vertical columns show enablers that are grounded in the Gemini principles and support every layer of the journey. As a reference architecture for digital twins, it illustrates the two-way flow of data between physical assets and their digital counterparts. Each layer features bidirectional connections, showing how data moves both up the chain and back to the physical asset.
Once we had this diagram to visualise the data journey, the possibilities of using it as a tool to map actual digital twin projects across the DT Hub community grew, and so we developed it further with a number of practical applications in mind.
So how does it work?
How the Gemini Reference Architecture works
The reference architecture offers a unified approach to mapping the data value chain that drives digital twins. It does this by tracking modular functions, technologies, data layers and the links between them.
In this system, data goes through several steps: it’s collected, transmitted, managed, modelled, simulated, analysed and shown visually, before then being used to make insight driven interventions. The vertical columns of the reference architecture represent enablers, rooted in the Gemini Principles, which should support every layer of the journey as necessary.
The architecture is designed with separate layers that can work independently, but still allow data to flow between them. This design makes it easier to track services across different layers, simplifies how data moves, and makes it possible to see where data comes from and where it goes.
The modular approach means that we have the potential to map fully operational digital twins which cover all layers of the data journey, but we can also map smaller scale data projects which may or may not be looking to evolve into something more complex.
Benefits of Using the Reference Architecture
The Gemini Framework delivers key benefits for organizations working with digital twins. It breaks down traditional silos between projects and organizations, making it easier to find and connect with complementary initiatives. Through this collaborative ecosystem, teams can share skills, technologies, and data—accelerating progress and achieving better results together.
The framework strengthens project planning by enabling organizations to map their projects and benchmark them against others in the field. This helps identify capability gaps and needed improvements. Teams can break projects into smaller, reusable components and track them throughout their lifecycle. The framework also provides valuable market visibility by offering a clear view of the digital twin landscape, helping teams spot overlaps and gaps, uncover innovation opportunities, and track emerging trends.
Most crucially, the framework enables comprehensive knowledge sharing across industries. Teams can learn from others facing similar challenges, access insights about other digital twin initiatives, and exchange best practices across sectors. This collaborative approach drives standardization in digital twin implementation, creating a more cohesive and efficient ecosystem for everyone involved.
Applying the Framework across the DT Hub
The Gemini Reference Architecture can enhance DT Hub features in the following ways:
- Case Studies: Case studies across the DT Hub will be greatly enriched by the use of the Gemini Reference Architecture. As well as enabling better categorisation and tagging based on functions and technologies, which will provide a more user-friendly method for learning and discovery of specific ways of collecting and handling data, it will also allow for more detailed, useful ‘deep dives’ on the process by which organisations are developing and operating their digital twins. For example, if you are in the research stage of your own digital twin project and you want to see how other people have implemented knowledge graphs and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) into their projects, that will be possible with reference architecture mapped case studies.
- Organization Pages: By incorporating the reference architecture, these pages can better showcase how different organizations and projects fit into the broader digital twin ecosystem. It can help identify potential collaboration opportunities and knowledge sharing possibilities across different sectors and teams. The architecture’s modular approach makes it easier to track services and data flows between different organizational initiatives.
- Gemini FIREBOX: The Gemini Reference Architecture has multiple applications for enhancing FIREBOX. Through its modular approach to mapping organizational capabilities, innovators can visualize their proposed solutions to FIREBOX challenges and potentially collaborate with other innovators to fulfil FIREBOX’s mission of driving collective innovation. Challenge owners can also use the reference architecture to create a “wish list” of required functions and technologies when addressing their specific challenges.
Connect, Compare, Collaborate
The Gemini Framework revolutionizes digital twin collaboration through its standardized data-value journey, mapping information flows from collection through visualization. This unified approach, with common standards and protocols, enables seamless communication between different digital twin systems.
The Reference Architecture acts as a central hub where projects intersect, providing organizations a clear view of their position within the ecosystem and opportunities for growth.
This foundation addresses complex urban and infrastructure challenges by creating an environment where teams can combine resources and knowledge, achieving outcomes impossible through isolated efforts.
This is just the beginning. We have ambitious plans for evolving the Gemini Framework into an integral part of a practical, step-by-step digital twin toolkit. This toolkit will guide you through the entire journey—from considering a digital twin as a solution, through development and operation, to sharing the lessons learned throughout its lifecycle.
By creating a framework that emphasizes and enables cooperation while preserving competitive innovation, we’re directly addressing the aspirations towards collaborating on the rules and competing on the game. The Gemini Framework demonstrates how shared standards, and a collaborative approach can elevate entire industries while still allowing individual organizations to thrive and innovate, thereby pushing back against that “cultural antipathy towards celebrating the beauty of cooperation between people”. Through the DT Hub community’s embrace of this framework, we’re not just building better digital twins – we’re fostering a new paradigm of collective progress that will benefit society. The future of connected digital twins is collaborative, and together, we’re making that future a reality.
Join us!
To get involved, visit the Gemini Framework web page and complete your own reference architecture, or to see it in action you can watch the recent Gemini Call recording featuring an organisation using the reference architecture to map, and then shape, their live digital twin project.
If you would like to share your thoughts on the Gemini Reference Architecture and give us feedback on the process, or would like to discuss it further in relation to a digital twin project, please contact Daniel by email at daniel.block@cp.catapult.org.uk.
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