Digital Twin Interoperability
Have you ever read a document and had it bubble around in your head for a week or so later? I swear that is my life story. I can never get rid of it from my thoughts until I draw a picture or write about it. I suppose it’s kind of like the earworm, you know where a song is stuck in your brain. Well, my ‘document earworm’ from a few weeks ago, was the System Interoperability Framework released by the Digital Twin Consortium. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, so fingers crossed this releases it from my brain.
The document they have released is very helpful, interesting, and something the Digital Twin economy desperately needs to ensure sustainable growth. I really enjoyed reading it and felt it bridged a lot of the interoperability areas of concern. To give you an overview, the framework is broken down into 7 interoperability concepts and each of those are carefully considered areas that relate to a Digital Twin, and more importantly, where there are interoperability issues with Digital Twins. So a big thank you to those involved in putting it together.
I think the reason I couldn’t stop thinking about the document (other than it was good) is I was trying to visualise what the framework was, and I found it a little tricky because I’ve grouped things differently in what I’ve learnt over the years. Which is normal, we all experience life through different lenses. So this article will detail the grouping that we have used and developed over the past 20 years. It is a framework that helps to decide and define digital initiatives. I have placed the Digital Twin Consortiums Interoperability Framework into this framework so you can see what I mean about grouping the concepts and understanding what else you might need to consider.
Below is an image overview of the framework.
Strategic Alignment
Strategic Alignment is the process we would go through to achieve the Digital Twin Consortiums concept 1 – system-centric design. This is really a methodology to transformation as opposed to a concept. In Australia we call it systems-led design where you look at the overall system, which could be a business, a process, an asset etc, and you decide what area your transformation will affect, how does it fit into the bigger picture, and how can you place a fence around that area, so your transformation doesn’t expand beyond the boundaries. Interoperability is detrimental at this point as whatever solution you are aiming for needs to work in the larger eco-system and align with existing policies and strategies. Once you have researched and established this alignment you will see a pattern form that tells you 3-5 fundamental goals that need to be achieved.
Core Pillars
The goals are the Core Pillars, which ties in with what the Digital Twin Consortium refers to as concept 2 model-based design. This is asking the question of what functionality must your Digital Twin initiatives or abilities perform. Whether you are looking at a city, portfolio of facilities, or individual assets you will have set goals that you have realised from the strategic alignment phase. The Digital Twin Consortium refers to these model-based uses as goals, physics, information, simulation, messaging and connection models. I like the functional definitions but for me I think the model-based areas should be formed based on the data or information types that it will be connecting with.
The model-based information areas generally fall into People/Humanistic (behavioural or social), Place/Natural (physical or biological), Economy/Formal (mathematical or logical). The easiest way I remember them is people, place, and economy. When you’re deciding on a solution you use these model-based pillars to decide if it is likely to meet your strategic goals, next is to decide the guiding principles that meet your city, business, or project needs.
Guiding Principles
The Guiding Principles are overarching needs that each solution or use case must achieve as a minimum. The Digital Twin Consortium mentions one of these principles as concept 7 – scalable mechanisms. This is the only area I felt needed expanding on or more like re-arranging in the framework as the information was there but just as sub-concepts under different topics. The reason for adding it here is generally we have found 5 guiding principles that help you decide on every solution. This guides your high-level interoperability expectations every solution must deliver otherwise you don’t consider it. Scalable is one of them, another might be citizen centric or contain specific or natural user heuristics or ontologies which is common for specific industries. The next could be collaborative or open standards to adapt to your unique eco-system which is highly applicable for asset and facility management and maintenance systems. Another could be security levels that meet the company or our clients cyber-security policies and the legal frameworks of the countries we work and operate within. Basically, what you are saying is every system must have these core elements in them to ensure it works in the overall Digital Twin. Which guides us to the next and more detailed decision making which is in the enablers.
Enablers
Enablers are what makes the Digital Twin eco-system work. The Digital Twin Consortium covers these in concept 3 to 6. At this point you are deciding on the infrastructure and how it is going to be used which is referred to in concept 3 of their framework, called holistic information flow. This leads to what the data services are, which is how and what state is the data in, to be transferred through that infrastructure – this is concept 4 state-based interactions. Then how the data will be governed and checked, as in where it will be stored, reviewed, and communicated across the layers of the infrastructure – this is concept 5 federated repositories. Finishing with where or how will the data be transferred into actionable information so that the functionality is achieved – this is concept 6 actionable information. We have found it easier if you break this down into infrastructure, services, governance, and policy to decide on what is needed to enable your Digital Twin. But the final piece of the Digital Twin puzzle that isn’t present in the Digital Twin Consortiums Interoperability Framework is the actors that make the Digital Twin happen.
Actors
Actors will determine the overall interoperability of the Digital Twin eco-system. Our State Digital Twins in Australia have shown this, where all states are following a similar system approach to ensure interoperability between government departments and agencies. When we work through the variety of actors we use Community, Business, and Government as the groups and expand on the detail within each of those groups to understand who the players are. These players can completely change your interoperability requirements and it is a careful balance to understand before you start any initiative. They are also a good source to share your funding if the initiative is mutually beneficial.
Talking about mutually beneficial, I hope you have found this an interesting take on the Digital Twin Consortiums Interoperability Framework. Let me know if you found it helpful, interesting, or otherwise. If you like it, I might discuss the detail of each section in the New Year, I’ll guide it by the interest shown in this article.
Thankfully, I can feel my ‘document earworm’ has settled a little for now, which is great as we head into the holiday season break. I hope you all have a lovely holiday season and a happy and healthy New Year.
2 thoughts on “Digital Twin Interoperability”
5 words: “Narrow Waist of the Internet”
Never has so much time been expanded to “engineer” a solution to a problem which is already understood and solved.
Somehow the world of AEC has forgotten to listen to itself: “AEC is the second least digitalised sector of the economy” (McKinsey 2020) ; Integrate that statement, so just look around (to the more digitalised sectors 😉 ) , learn from the rest of the world? Learn from other sectors of the economy…
Over & out for 2021
Hey Alain,
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and leave a comment.
You are right in our need to learn from the rest of the world. What I think the “Narrow Waist of the Internet”, or the greater overall concept of the “Hourglass Model” (as coined by Micah Beck) is around the why and how a distributed model such as the internet is so scalable and successful and how that model can be replicated to other markets and industries. Maybe as we test and challenge that concept the interoperability may not dissolve but certainly change.
Thanks again for stopping by and sharing, you’ve given me more food for thought.
Have a great 2022!!
For those interested, below are some links on the mentioned topics.
* Video Hourglass Model – https://youtu.be/L9s096_-r_U
* White Paper – On The Hourglass Model, The End-to-End Principle and
* Deployment Scalability – http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/12626/1/hourglass.pdf