An Expert Survey on Models and Digital Twins

TL;DR

This paper presents an expert survey on Digital Twins, highlighting challenges like lack of standardization and high manual effort, and emphasizing future research directions for automated model integration and interoperability.

Contribution

It provides industry insights into challenges and research needs for integrating diverse Digital Models within Digital Twins through a comprehensive expert survey.

Findings

Missing standardized interfaces in Digital Twins

High manual adaptation effort required

Limited support for model reuse across lifecycle phases

Abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) are becoming increasingly vital for future industrial applications, enhancing monitoring, control, and optimization of physical assets. This enhancement is made possible by integrating various Digital Models (DMs) within DTs, which must interoperate to represent different system aspects and fulfill diverse application purposes. However, industry perspectives on the challenges and research needs for integrating these models are rarely obtained. Thus, this study conducts an expert survey across multiple application domains to identify and analyze the challenges in utilizing diverse DMs within DTs. The results reveal missing standardized interfaces, high manual adaptation effort, and limited support for model reuse across lifecycle phases, highlighting future research needs in automated model composition and semantics-based interoperability.