Digital Twins

Enterprise Twin are digital twins that provide multiple essential purposes including: Organizational Modelling and Security, Resource-Based Access Control, physical world modelling, Instrument relations with Telemetry, and Data Cataloguing through Telemetry Twins.

Digital Twins are classified through a Category (Organizational, Spatial, Instrument and Telemetry) and then by a Type and then by a Sub-Type.

Digital Twin Definition Language (DTDL) is leveraged to describe data schemas that unleash the power of the data stored within the Digital Twins.

What is a Digital Twin?

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Digital twin is the phrase used to describe a computerized (or digital) version of a physical asset and/or process.

Digital Twins are an industry concept

  • There are different implementation of the concept with each vendor

  • AQI has implemented it’s own Digital Twins to

    • Optimize for cost and performance

    • Optimize for specific Water Quality needs

Provides Data about Physical Counterpart

This data can be used to model the “Real World” by recording attributes of the physical world.

Hierarchical Context

Often applications will use a hierarchical view to organize data and systems such as Spatial Graphs for Treatment Plants

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Geospatial Context

Virtual Items represent items in a “Physical World” - Where is the item? - To whom does the digital twin belong?

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Metadata and Attributes

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Digital Twin Categories, Types and SubTypes

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Categories

  1. Organization (Tenants, Customers, Regions): Used to model the multi-tenant aspects of Space, Device and Sensor Ownership

  2. Space (Locations): Used by Engineering companies to simulate a physical environment so that guidance can be given to the creation or modification of a system

  3. Instrument (Device and Sensors): Used by IoT frameworks to create a virtual copy of an instrument, so that the cloud software can talk to the virtual copy (device twin) instantaneously, and the device twin will take care of the synchronization to the real, physical hardware.

  4. Telemetry Category (Measurements, Columns): Signal data (Measurements, Events, etc.) from Devices and Sensors.

Types

Within each Category, each digital twin is further classified by a type.

Digital Twin Types Example

Heading Category

Heading Type

Organization

Users, Tenants

Space

Operation, Plant, Wastewater Locations, Sampling Locations

Instrument

Controllers, Process Instruments, Lab Instruments

Telemetry

Spreadsheet Columns, Historical Data

Sub-Types

Within each Category and Type, each digital twin is further classified by a subtype.

Digital Twin Types Example

Heading Category

Heading Type

Heading SubType

Organization

Tenants

Customers, Demo, Regional, Private Water Company, Test Account

Space

Operation

Surface Water Treatment Plant, Wastewater Treatment Plant, Collection System, Distribution System

Instrument

Controllers

Hach SC200, Hach SC4200, Hach SC4500

Telemetry

Spreadsheet Columns

15 Minute, Hourly, Four Hour, Daily