The Digital Twin Consortium (DTC) recently published a whitepaper, ‘Spatially Intelligent Digital Twin Capabilities and Characteristics’ to help business executives, enterprise, business, and solution architects, system designers, and developers understand the base concept of spatial information relative to the capabilities and characteristics used to describe locational intelligence in the context of digital twin capabilities. The concepts described in the whitepaper apply to a broad spectrum of digital twin use cases, industries, and disciplines.
“The virtual representation of reality, including the facilities, assets, and real-world conditions being modelled and managed, is central to a digital twin. For many digital twin use cases, representing, visualising, modelling and analysing these entities’ geographic location and spatial (positional) relationships is essential to anchor the virtual to real-world coordinates,” said Dan Isaacs, GM & CTO of the DTC. “A Spatially Intelligent Digital Twin can process and interpret spatial relationships between physical assets, infrastructure, and operational systems.”
The whitepaper provides guidance to:
- Document the capabilities and resulting value streams provided through the ability to visualise, understand, and analyse the geospatial locational characteristics of real-world entities and conditions
- Understand the distinction between different forms of locational representations, including geometric (3D models), spatial, and geospatial models
- Document the key characteristics of locational representations in a digital twin so organisations can consistently capture locational attributes, facilitating digital twin system-to-system integration
- Capture the Spatially Intelligent Digital Twin’s locational characteristics in the context of capabilities using the DTC’s Capabilities Periodic Table (CPT)
By completing the steps outlined in the white paper, organisations can define locational capabilities and data requirements for their digital twins. They can design, develop, and operate digital twins that meet their organisational needs and provide business value.
“Digital twin systems must be designed and architected in a structured way for scalability, interoperability, and composability to realise their transformative value,” said Daniel Feinberg, Senior IT Strategist and Consultant, Motivf Corporation and one of the authors. “This includes the definition of the locational capabilities of a given digital twin. This way, organisations can communicate how assets, conditions, and events are portrayed and analysed in a spatially intelligent digital twin.”
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