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Digital Twins

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The term 'Digital Twin' has existed since the early 1960's when it was first used to describe simulation models for the Apollo space program.

Digital twins should integrate real-time data from the physical counterpart to simulate, predict, and optimize performance in a virtual environment. Digital twins are common in industrial applications, i.e., Industry 4.0 or Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), and in civil engineering. An open source digital twin for IoT is Eclipse Ditto and iTwin.js for infrastructure.

In the last five years, mentions of Digital Twins have grown exponentially in the literature. Semantically, terms like 'digital twin', 'simulation', 'prototype', or 'model' are used interchangeably in research applications. A digital twin is a virtual model that accurately represents a physical object, system, or process.

Highlighting ICDI support of Digital Twins research

Tyson Swetnam, ICDI's Director of Open Science Initiatives, is also a co-Principal Investigator of CyVerse.org which currently supports multiple awards on Digital Twins.

Digital Twin Projects @ University of Arizona

KMAP List of Faculty and Grants in Digital Twin Research

School of Mining and Mineral Resources Virtual Reality

School of Plant Sciences (CALES)