Digital Twins

Facility and asset digital twins are typically associated with vertical buildings and usually consist of an as-built facility BIM model with accurate representations of all maintainable assets. They typically provide access to asset information and connect to work-order management systems (CMMS) to streamline facility management. When connected to live IoT sensor systems, real-time performance data is overlayed on top of the 3D as-built model enabling other operational insights and use cases such as system performance, energy usage, asset utilization, indoor environmental quality, wayfinding, situational awareness, and many others.

Process simulation digital twins are often regarded as “discrete event simulation” and are typically associated with frequently repeated process or workflow, for example in manufacturing, packaging, healthcare, or transportation, but provide immense value in any process where people and/or materials move through time and space. They are frequently used to model existing processes already in place at a facility, and test alternative scenarios to improve the current sub-optimal state. The end user can simulate the process while changing various parameters to find the workflow that yields the best result – usually the least amount of resources and time. 

An operational optimization digital twin is typically associated with horizontal utility and infrastructure assets, such as water, power, and transportation infrastructure. It combines real-time IoT sensor data, historical and environmental data, synthetic data and machine learning to train physics based and data driven models to monitor the performance of various types of systems, generate insights that may lead to improved system performance, predict potential failures, and identify and test solutions to a wide range of “what-if” scenarios in a risk-free environment. It can also be used during the design phase to test the design against potential risks and failures using synthetic data.