What is a Digital Twin?
01 July 2023
Many interpret the definition of a digital twin as a 3D model of a physical asset, for example, a terminal building, runway, bridge, or tunnel. However, without a connection between the digital version and its physical counterpart or process in the real world, it is a static update of an asset or activity at a given point in time.
Bentley defines a digital twin as a realistic and dynamic digital representation of a physical asset, process, or system in the built or natural world. The goal is to connect everyone and everything in the infrastructure engineering value chain and extended project ecosystem. To further enable owner-operators to understand the data, the information is also curated through proprietary machine learning, analytics and asset performance algorithms for a given stakeholder or process. By overlaying the engineering technology (ET), operations technology (OT), and information technology (IT), it enables users to visualise, query, and analyse infrastructure digital twins in their full context, at any level of granularity, at any scale, all geo-coordinated and fully searchable.
With the adoption of design modelling, coupled with brownfield information such as high-fidelity 3D reality models, a data-rich model can now be provided that becomes the start of a digital twin which can be leveraged downstream during construction and operations. In this representation, the digital twin is evergreen. It maintains and builds upon the data created, captured or ingested from enterprise systems in each project or asset lifecycle phase. In addition, the openness of the digital twin solution allows an efficient mechanism to apply seamless workflows with other applications.
For example, the design models can seamlessly calculate embodied carbon without manual data/file intervention. There is no lost or created data, making the entire process more transparent and efficient.
The solution can easily import design data, construction data, and field data. This allows users to create a construction model that can be used for up-to-date 4D scheduling and simulation, quantity/estimation and cost management, and real-time field performance updates.
With the construction model easily assembled by ingesting validated data from multiple sources, it becomes very easy to share with stakeholders from other departments in an intuitive 3D environment.
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