Model-driven digital twin construction

PurposeDespite the growing attention on the relevance of improved building management systems with cognition in recent years in the architecture, engineering, construction and operation (AECO) community, no review has been conducted to understand the human-environment interaction features of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and digital twins (DTs) in developing the concept of a cognitive building (CB). Thus, this paper aims to review existing studies on CPS and DTs for CB to propose a comprehensive system architecture that considers human-environment interactions.Design/methodology/approachScientometric analysis and content analysis were adopted for this study.FindingsThe scientometric analysis of 1,042 journal papers showed the major themes of CPS/DTs for CB, and these can be categorized into three key technologies to realize CB in the AECO community: CPS, DTs and cognitive computing (CC). Content analysis of 44 relevant publications in the built environment assisted in understanding and evidently confirming the claim of this study on the integration of CPS and DTs for CB in construction by also involving the CC. It is found and confirmed that CB can be realized with CPS and DTs along with the CC. A CB system architecture (CBSA) is proposed from the three key technologies considering the human-environment interactions in the loop. The study discovered the potential applications of the CBSA across the building lifecycle phases, including the design, construction and operations and maintenance, with the potential promise of endowing resilience, intelligence, greater efficiency and self-adaptiveness. Based on the findings of the review, four research directions are proposed: human-environment interactions, CB for sustainable building performance, CB concept for modular buildings and moving beyond CB.Originality/valueThis study stands out for comprehensively surveying the intellectual core and the landscape of the general body of knowledge on CPS/DTs for CB in the built environment. It makes a distinctive contribution to knowledge as it does not only propose CBSA by integrating CPS and DTs along with CC but also suggests some potential practical applications. These may require expert judgments and real case examples to enhance reproducibility and validation.

CPS is complex distributed systems, which contain computing, communications, and control. CPS is a product of the combination of physical world and the cyber world. The cyber world needs a lot of physical equipment to deal with perception and communication, then collect and transfer the information in the real environment, and by computation to forecast what might happen in future real environment, at last through the control strategy to achieve the optimal solution. In short, cyber physical system is the complex systems combination with computation system, sensory system and control system. Cyber physical system through more extensive connection, the physical world more thorough cognition, more effectively control the physical world, make the information world and the physical world closer integration, realize coordination awareness and control of the physical world. The paper through the analysis of the human perception system, build a cyber-physical fusion system based on human perception architecture.

Threat modeling is a critical proactive security technique for identifying threats and determining mitigations. However, traditional approaches often fall short for Industrial Control Systems (ICS), which automate operations in domains like manufacturing and energy and are a subset of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). CPS integrates computation, networking, and physical processes, with ICS requiring specialized cybersecurity approaches due to its operational and safety-critical nature. This study explores the use of digital twin technology as a promising cybersecurity tool for ICS, enabling testing and analysis without disrupting operations. By examining the capabilities of digital twins in analysis, simulation, and replication, the research evaluates their potential to enhance threat modeling across the CPS life-cycle. Insights from the European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO) Technical Paper on Cybersecurity Scenarios and Digital Twins guide the exploration of their role in threat modeling. The study addresses four research questions: 1. What purposes do digital twins serve in cybersecurity? 2. What benefits do digital twins offer in cybersecurity? 3. How can digital twin technology be leveraged for threat modeling? 4. What advantages can the use of digital twins bring to threat modeling? Our findings reveal that digital twins enhance ICS threat modeling by enabling continuous, dynamic, and autonomous assessment, offering valuable insights for advancing cybersecurity strategies in ICS, CPS, and related domains.

• The objectives of this study match the CIE content as it provides academcians and practioners with innovative and helpful information on advanced computing technology in the industry. • Foundation models are large-scale machine learning models that have been trained on large amounts of data to perform a variety of tasks. • FMs are used to support management and operations in supply chain and logistics management and operations. • The paper is based on research conducted by the authors with several Italian and European organizations under a grant from the European Union's Next GenerationUE initiative. • The paper concludes with a real-world industrial case study to further substantiate these claims. The organizational environment is subject to constant change, driven by rapid technological progress and the advent of Industry 5.0. This dynamic scenario compels authors and practitioners in the fields of logistics and supply chain management and operations (LSCM) to explore the transformative impact of foundation models (FMs) and artificial intelligence (AI) on these areas. The integration of AI FMs, coupled with digital twins (DT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS), will not only optimize current processes but also fundamentally reshape the future of digital engineering (DE) in LSCM. Understanding the opportunities and challenges with FMs is critical to the strategic positioning in an ever-evolving marketplace where Industry 5.0 technologies drive innovation and efficiency. Organizations can gain a competitive advantage by analyzing the opportunities and risks of integrating FMs into LSCM operations and leveraging their ability to improve decision making and enhance predictive analytics and real-time monitoring through DT and CPS. This paper serves as a comprehensive and informative guide for evaluating the transformative potential of FMs in redesigning LSCM operations in the context of Industry 5.0, highlighting critical applications, exploring potential benefits and challenges, and pointing to upcoming innovations such as AI-driven DT and smart cyber-physical systems that are revolutionizing supply chain (SC) processes. The detailed analysis based on the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) components shows that FM-based solutions, supported by AI and Industry 5.0 technologies, can significantly improve LSCM business processes. This paper presents an integrated functional framework and technical architecture for implementing FM in LSCM, emphasizing the role of DT and CPS in enabling smart, adaptive, and resilient SC. The paper concludes with an industrial case study that further substantiates these claims and shows the practical application of FM in a shipbuilding organization. The case study describes successful approaches to implementing and effectively utilizing AI and DT. It provides a practical, functional, and technical framework for applying the transformative impact of FMs on LSCM within the Industry 5.0 paradigm. This integration highlights the synergy between FM, AI, DT, and CPS and paves the way. It paves the way for a more innovative, sustainable, and competitive management of supply networks and their operations.

Aiming at the increasingly complex management and dispatching problems of power system, this paper combines Beidou precise space-time technology with digital twin system theory, and puts forward a method of constructing intelligent management and dispatching platform of power grid. The method combines Beidou and IoT (Internet of Things) sensors to form a digital twin management and scheduling platform which can perform state prediction, fault diagnosis, self-healing and other functions. Firstly, this paper analyzes the overall architecture of Beidou digital power twin system, then discusses the construction method of digital twin in power system from the aspects of digital twin modeling theory, data acquisition intelligent terminal based on Beidou, operation mode of digital twin platform, etc. Finally, the application test analysis is carried out. The research results show that the method proposed in this paper has reference value for improving the management and dispatching capability of smart grid.

Biopharma Is Going Digital … Bit by Bit

The significance of digital twins in mechanical and plant engineering companies is becoming increasingly important in the course of Industry 4.0 as a cyber-physical system. Digital twins represent a real object in virtual space. The properties of the real object are simulated using structural and behavior models, so that the digital twin represents a spitting image of the real object in virtual space. The structural models and behavioral models are created by modeling the digital twin in different modeling and simulation domains. A common form of the digital twin in mechanical and plant engineering is a digital twin, which is based on a kinematic multibody simulation. The kinematic digital twin can be coupled with industrial controllers and is often used for the virtual commissioning of plants/machines. These digital twins usually represent the kinematic behavior of the plan/machine in an idealized way and neglect the physically determined system dynamics. By extending the digital twin by the generation of state variables of a multiphysical dynamic simulation and the use of these state variables by industrial programmable logic controller (PLCs), advantages arise in the use of the digital twin with respect to virtual commissioning, fault analysis, condition monitoring and simulative optimization of machines and plants. Thus, it is necessary to complement the kinematic digital twin by a multiphysical dynamic simulation and to connect this extended model of the digital twin to PLCs.

Digital Twins (DTs), being the virtual replicas of their physical counterparts, share valuable knowledge of the underlying physical processes and act as data acquisition and dissemination sources to Cyber–Physical System (CPS). Moreover, without obstructing the ongoing operations, DTs also provide an assessment platform for evaluating the operational behavior and security of the CPS. Therefore, they become a potential source of data breaches and a broad attack surface for attackers to launch covert attacks. To detect and mitigate security loopholes in DTs, one of the potential solutions is to leverage a gamification approach that can assess the security level of DTs while providing security analysts with a controlled and supportive virtual training environment. Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)-based approaches can complement the idea of security orchestration and automation in the gamification approach. However, AI/ML-based DTs security solutions are generally constrained by the lack of transparency of AI operations, which results in less confidence in the decisions made by the AI models. To address the explainable security challenges of DTs, this article proposes a gamification approach called sEcuriNg dIgital twins through GaMification Approach (ENIGMA). While leveraging DTs as an offensive security platform, ENIGMA provides gaming scenarios to assess DTs’ security and train security analysts. The game players within ENIGMA are humans (the attacker team) and AI agents (the defender team). Furthermore, ENIGMA is supported by an eXplainable AI (XAI)-based DT security assessment model that explains the decisions made based on the SHAP values by the AI model on attack vectors for the defender team, i.e., the AI agent. The SHAP values illustrate the contribution of different features towards predicting the outcome of attack vectors. This explanation can help security analysts to take security measures based on reasoned and trustworthy decisions. Finally, experimental validation has been carried out to demonstrate the viability of ENIGMA.

Construction of approximate reasoning model for dynamic CPS network and system parameter identification

Digital Twins are emerging as a transformative technology within Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), offering enhanced optimization, predictive maintenance, and real-time monitoring. However, their integration also introduces significant security challenges. These include vulnerabilities such as data breaches, unauthorized access, and cyber-attacks that disrupt real-time data flow between their physical and digital components. The involvement of IoT devices, sensors, and complex networked environments expands the attack surface, making Digital Twins susceptible to threats like Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, malware infiltration, and insider sabotage. Effective risk management and assessment are crucial in identifying vulnerabilities, evaluating risks, and implementing mitigation strategies. Securing Digital Twins ensures data integrity, system reliability, and the continued functionality of the physical assets they represent. This paper aims to classify the various security threats associated with Digital Twins and propose structured risk management approaches to enhance their security within CPS. By addressing these challenges, organizations can ensure the dependability and trustworthiness of Digital Twin implementations across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, smart cities, and IoT ecosystems.

Digital Twins (DTs) are revolutionizing Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) in many ways, including their development and operation. The significant interest of industry and academia in DTs has led to various definitions of DTs and related concepts, as seen in many recently published papers. Thus, there is a need for precisely defining different DT concepts and their relationships. To this end, we present a conceptual model that captures various DT concepts and their relationships, some of which are from the published literature, to provide a unified understanding of these concepts in the context of CPSs. The conceptual model is implemented as a set of Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagrams and the concepts in the conceptual model are explained with a running example of an automated warehouse case study from published literature and based on the authors’ experience of working with the real CPS case study in previous projects.

Heterogeneous cyber-physical control systems based on digital twins are in demand by Industry 4.0. In accordance with the contemporary systems engineering methodology, such systems are designed at the level of digital models. The paper proposes approaches to formalization and subsequent automation of solving direct and inverse problems of their design. To unify descriptions of heterogeneous components, we follow a viewpoint-based approach to architecture design recommended by the international standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010. Following recent trends, we employ category theory as a mathematical framework for the formal description and solution of design problems. Indeed, category theory is a branch of higher algebra specifically aimed at a unified representation of objects of different nature and relationships between them. The design space of a heterogeneous cyber-physical system is constructed as a subcategory of the multicomma category, the objects of which describe possible system architectures with a fixed structural hierarchy represented from a certain viewpoint as diagrams, and morphisms denote actions associated with the parts selection and replacement during the system design. Direct design problems consist in evaluating the properties of the system as a whole by its architecture and are solved using a universal category-theoretic construction of the colimit of the diagram. The solution of inverse problems that require finding variants of the system architecture, which are (sub-, Pareto-) optimal according to the consumer quality criteria, consists in reconstructing diagrams by their colimit edges. For such reconstruction, optimization algorithms of gradient descent type are reasonable to employ, which navigate along the system design space morphisms calculating the path by means of computer algebra. Typical techniques of assembling cyber-physical systems, such as modular composition and aspect weaving, are described in the language of category theory and illustrated. As an example, we outline the design of energy-efficient robotic production lines represented from the behavior viewpoint as discrete-event simulation models.

Digital Twins (DT) facilitate monitoring and reasoning processes in cyber–physical systems. They have progressively gained popularity over the past years because of intense research activity and industrial advancements. Cognitive Twins is a novel concept, recently coined to refer to the involvement of Semantic Web technology in DTs. Recent studies address the relevance of ontologies and knowledge graphs in the context of DTs, in terms of knowledge representation, interoperability and automatic reasoning. However, there is no comprehensive analysis of how semantic technologies, and specifically ontologies, are utilized within DTs. This Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is based on the analysis of 82 research articles, that either propose or benefit from ontologies with respect to DT. The paper uses different analysis perspectives, including a structural analysis based on a reference DT architecture, and an application-specific analysis to specifically address the different domains, such as Manufacturing and Infrastructure. The review also identifies open issues and possible research directions on the usage of ontologies and knowledge graphs in DTs.

The strategic application domains of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) [7,6] include health care, transportation, managing large-scale physical infrastructures, and defense systems (avionics). In all these applications there is a need to acquire reliable resources in order to provide trustworthy services at every service request context. Hence we view CPS as a large distributed highway for services and supply chain management. In traditional service-oriented systems service, but not resource, is a first class entity in the architecture model and resources are assumed to be available at run time to provide services. However resource quality and availability are determining factors for timeliness and trustworthiness of CPS services, especially during emergencies. So in the service-oriented view of CPS discussed in this paper we place services around resources, because resource constrain service quality. We investigate a resource-centric, and context-dependent model for service-oriented CPS and discuss 3-tiered architecture for service-oriented CPS in this paper.

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) are redefining modern engineering practices by bringing the computational systems together with physical processes, boosting efficiency, security, and sustainability in different industries. This research highlights the influence of CPS in different sectors: its power to facilitate realtime decision making, predictive maintenance, and cybersecurity issues. The context in which this study occurs is to the application of digital twin technology in CPS — which is physical systems’ simulation for performance optimization and downtime reduction. The research includes the analysis of the efficiency of cybersecurity measures applied in CPS environment, the identification of vulnerabilities, and the suggestions of solutions for the mitigation of a cyber threat. Digital twins and predictive maintenance appears to improve the system performance by 30%, reduces the downtime by 25% due to application. Moreover, the research addresses upcoming concerns of sustainable practices in CPS and emerging technologies such as Industry 4.0 that promote resource optimization and waste reduction. The results show that CPS can improve both the operational efficiency and the environmental sustainability by enabling a smarter resource management. This work advances our understanding of trends, challenges and future directions in CPS as a means to inform engineering management practices, which are enabled by CPS.