The Digital Twin Consortium has just launched its latest initiative, a member-driven programme aimed at developing next-generation digital twins and the enabling technologies.
The Digital Twin Testbed initiative will allow DTC members to develop, test, verify, and validate digital twin systems and advance digital-twin-enabling technologies, using a collaborative, holistic approach.
“The DTC Digital Twin Testbed initiative opens new horizons for our members, allowing them to demonstrate how they’re pushing the boundaries of digital twins and enabling technologies,” Dan Isaacs, the organisation’s General Manager and Chief Technology Officer, said.
The initiative builds on three foundational developments put in place by DTC over recent months.
Firstly, a Digital Twin Business Maturity Model provides a dynamic maturity assessment framework aligned to digital twin lifecycle phases and technology readiness levels. In a white paper released in November 2024, a working group identified five stages of maturity through which companies are likely to pass as they optimize digital twins, and five elements against which these maturity stages should be evaluated.
The five stages are Passive, Starter, Progressive, Mature, and Master. The five elements are Ambition & Strategy, Leadership, Culture, Change & Capability, Operating Model & Processes, and Digital Twin Technology.
Secondly, the DTC’s Platform Stack Architectural Framework enables understanding of best practice concepts for business leaders before choosing which technology to select or develop.
Finally, the Digital Twin Capabilities Periodic Table and Toolkit lay out an architecture and technology-agnostic requirements definition framework for organisations to design, develop, deploy, and operate digital twins based on use case capability requirements.
The testbed initiative will support a maturity assessment framework of required digital twin capabilities based on key performance indicators for testing, verification, and validation, according to DTC.
This includes key facets of digital engineering such as predictive modelling and simulation accuracy, AI-enhanced decision support and optimization, real-time synchronization and data integration, system-of-systems collaboration and information sharing, security and trust protocol implementation and validation, cross-platform interoperability and integration.
Greg Porter, Solution Architect for Sev1TEch, who is on the DTC Technical Advisory Committee, said the testbed initiative would enable his company to test the integration of emerging technologies, such as Generative AI, to enhance digital twin capabilities.
“This includes AI co-pilots that augment digital twin intelligence and digital twin-based multi-agent generative systems that enable increased autonomy and value,” he said.
Holistic approach
DTC was founded in 2020 as an industry body to bring together industry, government, and academia to help harmonise vocabulary, architecture, security, and interoperability of digital twin technology.
Isaacs said companies need to collaborate on digital twin development if they are to avoid the pitfalls inherent in taking a more ad-hoc approach to designing and implementing digital twins, which can lead to inconsistencies that hamper data sharing across business units and establishing an end-to-end view of business processes.
DTC membership now stands at over 180 organisations across industries ranging from aerospace to natural resources. They include heavy hitters in the energy industry, such as BP and Exxon, as well as tech companies including Microsoft.
In January 2024, DTC and its sister organisation the Industry IoT Consortium integrated their operations to allow them to take a more holistic approach to problem solving in the tech sphere. Non-profit Object Management Group (OMG) was parent to both organisations.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
