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Digital Twins' Maturity: The Need for Interoperability
Linköping University, Department of Science and Technology, Communications and Transport Systems. Linköping University, Faculty of Science & Engineering. Swedish Natl Rd & Transport Res Inst VTI, SE-58195 Linkoping, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6956-7695
Swedish Natl Rd & Transport Res Inst VTI, SE-58195 Linkoping, Sweden.
Linköping University, Department of Science and Technology, Communications and Transport Systems. Linköping University, Faculty of Science & Engineering.
2024 (English)In: IEEE Systems Journal, ISSN 1932-8184, E-ISSN 1937-9234, Vol. 18, no 1, p. 713-724Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Digital twins have gained tremendous momentum since their conceptualization over 20 years ago, as more and more domains discover their value in driving efficiencies and reducing costs, while enabling technologies continue to advance. Originally aimed at product optimization and intelligent manufacturing, the range of applications for digital twins now spans entire complex, often highly interconnected systems such as ports, cities, and supply chains. Despite the increasing demand for sophisticated digital twinning solutions across all domains and scopes, their development is often still constrained by differing definitions, different understandings of their functional scope and design, and a lack of concrete methodology toward implementing a comprehensive digital twinning solution. Although there are already papers that evaluate the capabilities of existing digital twinning solutions on the basis of maturity levels, these usually consider the object to be twinned in isolation and are often domain-specific. With this article we address exactly this gap discussing how interoperability of digital twins can break physical boundaries of an isolated system, enabling system of systems joint optimization. We therefore consider interoperable digital twins to be the most mature twinning platforms, thus, we discuss in detail six digital twin maturity levels, departing from the interrelated contexts of ports, cities, and supply chains. Examples drawn from these domains demonstrate the need for interoperability toward optimizing processes and systems in realistic contexts, rather than in assumed isolation.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC , 2024. Vol. 18, no 1, p. 713-724
Keywords [en]
Digital twin (DT) maturity; interoperability; smart cities; ports; supply chains
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-200262DOI: 10.1109/JSYST.2023.3340422ISI: 001129770400001OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-200262DiVA, id: diva2:1829619
Note

Funding Agencies|Trafikverket Sweden as part of the Triple F (MODIG-TEK)

Available from: 2024-01-19 Created: 2024-01-19 Last updated: 2024-09-19Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Digital twinning for ports: from characterization to operations’ modelling
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Digital twinning for ports: from characterization to operations’ modelling
2024 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Ports are actively pursuing greater operational efficiency to effectively handle the increasing global flow of goods, while striving to improve the energy efficiency of their operations to comply with new environmental regulations. As a result, innovation-leading ports have begun to recognize the potential of digital twins to overview, coordinate and optimize port processes, resulting in energy savings, and reductions of costs and of CO2 emissions. While digital twins have gained momentum in other domains such as smart manufacturing and aerospace, their adoption in ports has been comparatively slow. This can be explained, among other things, by the multi-stakeholder nature of the port and the high complexity of the often interconnected port processes. Thus, this thesis, grounded in the context of ports, discusses what constitutes a digital twin, proposes characteristics to assess the maturity of existing digital twins, and introduces and evaluates mathematical models to support a key port process, which can be used as components of a digital twin for the port. The thesis is composed of three papers: 

Paper 1 is based on an extensive literature review, through which digital twins among different domains are studied in depth in order to transfer insights from these to the port domain. The resulting discussion of what constitutes a port’s digital twin and the requirements that a port’s digital twin must fulfil, together with a discussion of use cases of how port digital twins can contribute to energy savings, form the basis of Paper 1. 

Paper 2 discusses how digital twins’ maturity can be assessed within six maturity levels and presents milestones for their implementation. Notably, Interoperability is identified as the highest maturity level, as the numerous stakeholders and their respective digital twins must work together to reach a coordinated system of systems performance. Using this assessment demonstrates that only a few innovation-leading ports have developed sophisticated digital twinning solutions so far. 

Paper 3 is dedicated to coordinating container retrieval with stacking, combining two key port operations. Thus, it can present a key modeling component of a port digital twin, considering jointly the goals of reducing the energy demanding crane movements, as well as keeping schedules tight to avoid port congestion issues. This is directly reflecting the potentially conflicting perspectives of different stakeholders in the port context. The provided optimization model and algorithm show that jointly addressing both problems may lead to a reduced efficiency of both individual objectives, but from a systems perspective, leads to a higher overall port efficiency. 

Abstract [sv]

Hamnar strävar aktivt efter ökad operativ effektivitet för att hantera den ökande globala varuflödet, samtidigt som de strävar efter att förbättra energieffektiviteten. Som ett resultat har ledande hamnar börjat se potentialen hos digitala tvillingar för att skapa överblick samt koordinera och optimera processer i hamnen. Målet med användningen av digitala tvillingar är energibesparingar samt minskning av kostnader och CO2-utsläpp. Medan digitala tvillingar har använts inom andra områden såsom tillverknings-, flyg- och rymdindustrin, har införandet i hamnar varit jämförelsevist långsamt. Detta kan förklaras, bland annat, av hamnens många olika involverade aktörer och den höga komplexiteten i de ofta sammanlänkade hamnprocesserna. Därför fokuserar denna avhandling, med utgångspunkt i hamnkontexten, vad som utgör en digital tvilling, presenterar egenskaper för olika mognadsnivåer hos befintliga digitala tvillingar, och introducerar samt utvärderar matematiska modeller som kan bli delkomponenter i en digital tvilling för hamnen. Avhandlingen består av tre artiklar:

Artikel 1 bygger på en omfattande litteraturöversikt, inom vilken digitala tvillingar för olika områden studeras ingående för att överföra insikter från dessa till hamndomänen. Detta resulterar i en presentation av vad som utgör en hamns digitala tvilling och de krav som en hamns digitala tvilling måste uppfylla, tillsammans med en diskussion om möjliga sett på vilka hur hamnens digitala tvillingar kan bidra till energibesparingar.

Artikel 2 presenterar ett ramverk för hur mognaden hos digitala tvillingar kan bedömas baserat på sex mognadsnivåer och presenterar milstolpar för deras implementering. Noterbart är att interoperabilitet identifieras som den högsta mognadsnivån, eftersom de många intressenterna och deras respektive digitala tvillingar måste koordineras för att nå en fungerande system-av-systemnviå. Genom att använda denna bedömning visar det sig att endast några få innovationsledande hamnar hittills har utvecklat sofistikerade digitala tvillinglösningar.

Artikel 3 fokuserar på koordinering av containerupphämtning koordinerat med staplings effektivitet, två viktiga hamnaktivieter. Därför representerar dessa en viktig modelleringskomponent i en hamns digitala tvilling, med beaktande av målen att minska de energikrävande kranrörelse, samt behovet av att hålla planerade tider för att undvika trängsel och väntan. Detta speglar direkt de potentiellt konfliktfyllda perspektiven hos olika intressenter i hamnkontexten. Den utvecklade optimeringsmodellen och algoritmen visar att gemensam hantering av båda dessa problemen kan leda till en minskad effektivitet för de respektive individuella målen, men en ökad effektivitet från ett systemperspektiv för hamnen som helhet.  

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2024. p. 35
Series
Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Licentiate Thesis, ISSN 0280-7971 ; 1987
Keywords
Digital twins, Ports, Operational efficiency, Collaborative decision-making, Port decarbonization
National Category
Transport Systems and Logistics
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-201084 (URN)10.3384/9789180755726 (DOI)9789180755719 (ISBN)9789180755726 (ISBN)
Presentation
2024-03-22, K3, Kåkenhus, Campus Norrköping, Norrköping, 10:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
Swedish Transport Administration, 2019.2.2.16.
Available from: 2024-02-20 Created: 2024-02-20 Last updated: 2024-05-27Bibliographically approved

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Klar, RobertAngelakis, Vangelis

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