Behavior-Centered Digital-Twin Design for Dynamic Cyber-Physical System Development

Abstract

Digital Twins are digital models of Cyber-Physical Systems to enable not only continuous monitoring but also active functional improvement of networked services, physical products, machines and devices. This capacity is of utmost importance when recognizing and exploring business opportunities in terms of organizational and technology innovations, as well as enriching the scope of system-relevant applications. Before being operated in their target ecosystems, such as smart cities, Cyber-Physical Systems can be validated and be run as Digital Twin through executable behavior models. The development of these models captures both, the horizontal, and the vertical integration of CPS components, thus allowing to consider specific system qualities, such as pollution effects of traffic. This article investigates methodological and technological aspects of developing and operating Digital Twins along system transformation processes. We consider integration depth and breadth, connectivity, organizational intelligence, validation, and implementation variability in the context of human-centered modeling and development. The approach enriches the understanding of digital twins towards digital representation of Cyber-Physical Systems allowing for dynamic allocation of physical and digital parts according to operational conditions. An exemplary case study in traffic management demonstrates the feasibility and practicability of the communication-centered approach.

Enriching Socio-Technical Sustainability Intelligence through Sharing Autonomy

“…Such scenarios (see also Stary [43] for details on healthcare, Stary et al [44] for smart mobility applications, and Barachini et al [45] for integrating social behavior into sociotechnical sustainability intelligence) require considering autonomy as a multi-faceted construct that has evolved from technology-driven domains such as autonomic computing to trigger socio-technical approaches. Further categories of autonomy can be related to information systems design in terms of task and human autonomy due to the business process model representations used as baseline for increasing capabilities of self-adaptation.…”

Model‐based digital twins of medicine dispensers for healthcare IoT applications

“…Several approaches utilize domain‐specific modeling languages, 27,29 metamodels, 30,31,60 and model‐driven techniques 32,61 for creating DTs in various domains such as DTs for managing graphical user interactions, 33–35 satellite systems, 36 and web applications 37 . Some approaches are dedicated to creating DTs for cyber‐physical systems (CPSs), such as References 28,38,39. Similar to these works, our approach uses MDE to generate and operate DTs.…”

Digital Process Twins as Intelligent Design Technology for Engineering Metaverse/XR Applications

“…With a proper approach to abstraction, system behavior in complex situations can be simulated and evaluated before actually being implemented and potentially wasting resources or creating harm [27,29,43]. Role-specific modeling as the core of sustainabilityrelevant activities and interventions provides a stakeholder-centered granularity for adaptive system design through DPTs.…”

“…The Metaverse/XR application as a part of the considered socio-technical CPS is structured as a set of task-specific features assigned to interacting roles, as shown in the center of the figure. Since the focus in this paper is on the Metaverse/XR design, other CPS functionalities, e.g., contacting a medical expert in case a home-healthcare emergency occurs, are not detailed and included in the figure; for CPS design based on DPTs, see [43]. In Figure 2 and for illustrating Metaverse/XR applications, the exclusively available digital processes for handling the selection and the acquisition of NFTs are exemplified.…”