Digital twins

Destination Earth (DestinE) is an initiative initiated and coordinated by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) in support of
the European Green Deal1 and as contribution to the establishment of the Green Deal Data Space, one of several data spaces envisaged in the European Strategy for Data (COM2020 66 final).
The overall objective of DestinE is to develop a service infrastructure that:
- serves specific EU needs based on clearly identified EU policy priorities and user needs in relation to e.g. the Green Deal, and
- is at the same time firmly based on European values, such as commitment to quality and transparency in order to build trust in evidence-based policy-making among all stakeholders.
DestinE will include a shared horizontal layer including computer processing, data, software, and infrastructure and some vertical applications, Digital Twins (DTs), in selected thematic areas responding
to priority policy use cases. To identify these priorities, the Joint Research Centre of the European
Commission (JRC) has been tasked by DG CNECT to collect a number of potential use cases for DestinE representing needs of policy DGs in the Commission. This document presents 30 use cases received from
six policy DGs, the JRC and 5 relevant European stakeholders.
The use cases were preliminarily evaluated and clustered according to their assumed maturity level in terms of policy, scientific and anticipatory potential. Following a series of interactions with all stakeholders consulted, JRC identified two initial DTs on:
 Extreme Earth issues (disaster risk management in relation to extreme weather-induced natural disasters);
 Climate change adaptation issues (primarily food and water supply security).
Another DT on digital oceans (around food and energy issues) wasintroduced as a suggestion to DG CNECT to be possibly developed in the second phase of DestinE’s implementation.
Although this report is certainly neither exhaustive nor fully descriptive e.g. in relation to the assumed maturity levels of the mentioned use cases, it served nevertheless as a useful input to DG CNECT’s final
definition of the scope of DTs whose development would be prioritized in the course of the DestinE implementation.

The development of a sustainable technology for the Blue Economy (a new Blue Technology) sets out three core research objectives, reflecting key challenges to be tackled by the sea industries and scientific and technological communities: The fast development of doable decarbonization processes through development and demonstrati on of deployable, competitive, and sustainable technological solutions for energy transition (climate neutral blue economy), a sustainable exploitation and exploration of oceans, seas and coastal areas to provide new resources, from raw materials to products, including food (sustainable use and management of marine resources), and the development and exploitation of digital-based knowledge while accumulating data from new observation networks (persistent monitoring and digitalization of seas and oceans). To meet these operational objectives, different topics and related technologies need to be further developed. A possible list of disciplinary objecti ves is the following.

Purpose-The purpose of this research is to develop a generic framework of a digital twin (DT)-based automated construction progress monitoring through reality capture to extended reality (RC-to-XR). Design/methodology/approach-IDEF0 data modeling method has been designed to establish an integration of reality capturing technologies by using BIM, DTs and XR for automated construction progress monitoring. Structural equation modeling (SEM) method has been used to test the proposed hypotheses and develop the skill model to examine the reliability, validity and contribution of the framework to understand the DRX model's effectiveness if implemented in real practice. Findings-The research findings validate the positive impact and importance of utilizing technology integration in a logical framework such as DRX, which provides trustable, real-time, transparent and digital construction progress monitoring. Practical implications-DRX system captures accurate, real-time and comprehensive data at construction stage, analyses data and information precisely and quickly, visualizes information and reports in a real scale environment, facilitates information flows and communication, learns from itself, historical data and accessible online data to predict future actions, provides semantic and digitalize construction information with analytical capabilities and optimizes decision-making process. Originality/value-The research presents a framework of an automated construction progress monitoring system that integrates BIM, various reality capturing technologies, DT and XR technologies (VR, AR and MR), arraying the steps on how these technologies work collaboratively to create, capture, generate, analyze, manage and visualize construction progress data, information and reports.

Resumen: El fenómeno de la transformación digital y los continuos males que socavan el desarrollo de las democracias modernas, y con ello el de las sociedades que las adoptan para organizarse, ha generado la emergencia de diferentes propuestas de modelos democráticos sustentados sobre algoritmos de Inteligencia Artificial. Entre ellas, la democracia aumentada, que pretende la participación directa de la ciudadanía en la política a través de agentes digitales de IA-gemelos virtuales-que recopilan y procesan la información de su usuario personal para predecir sus decisiones y participar en su nombre en los foros donde se discuten las leyes, los decretos, las políticas y/o los proyectos de un país. El objetivo de este estudio es ofrecer orientaciones para la recreación de un ecosistema ciberético compuesto de diferentes mecanismos de gestión, monitorización y cumplimiento de la ética que permita el desarrollo práctico de la democracia aumentada en un sentido moralmente válido y socialmente responsable.

Abstract: The phenomenon of digital transformation and the continuing ills undermining the development of modern democracies, and with it the societies that adopt this system to organise themselves, have led to the emergence of different democratic models based on Artificial Intelligence algorithms. These include augmented democracy, which attempts to achieve direct citizen participation in politics via AI digital agents-virtual twins-compiling and processing information on their personal user to predict their decisions and participate on their behalf in forums where a country's laws, decrees, policies and projects are discussed. The aim of this study is to offer guidance for the recreation of a cyberethical ecosystem consisting of different management and monitoring mechanisms and compliance with ethics that allow the practical development of augmented democracy in a morally valid and socially responsible sense.

The automotive industry aims to deploy commercial level-5 fully autonomous self-driving vehicles (FA-SDVs) in a diverse range of benefit-driven concepts on city roads in the years to come. In all future visions of operating networks of FA-SDVs, humans are expected to intervene with some kind of remote supervisory role. Recent advances in cyber-physical systems (CPS) within the concept of Internet of Everything (IoE) using tactile Internet (TI) teleport us to teleoperate remote objects within the cyber-world. Human-on-the-loop (HOTL) haptic teleoperation with an extension of human control and sensing capability by coupling with artificial sensors and actuators with an increased sense of real-time driving in the remote vehicle can help overcome the challenging tasks when the new driver-artificial intelligence (AI) agent-encounters an unorthodox situation that can't be addressed by the autonomous capabilities. This paper analyses HOTL real-time haptic delay-sensitive teleoperation with FA-SDVs, in the aspects of human-vehicle teamwork by establishing two similar remote parallel worlds-real-world vehicle time-varying environment and cyber-world emulation of this environment, i.e., digital twins (DTs)-in which a human telesupervisor (HTS), as a biological agent, can be immersed with no cybersickness enabling omnipresence through a timely bidirectional flow of energy and information. The experiments conducted as a proof of concept of HOTL haptic teleoperation regarding learning with human-vehicle collaboration show promising results and the potential of benefiting from the proposed framework. INDEX TERMS Autonomous vehicles, driverless vehicles, human-on-the-loop (HOTL), haptics, humanin-the-loop (HITL), human-vehicle coactivity, self-driving, tactile Internet, teleoperation, digital twins, Internet of Vehicles (IoVs).

After being collected for patient care, Observational Health Data (OHD) can further benefit patient well-being by sustaining the development of health informatics and medical research. Vast potential is unexploited because of the fiercely private nature of patient-related data and regulation about its distribution. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently emerged as a groundbreaking approach to learn generative models efficiently that produce realistic Synthetic Data (SD). They have revolutionized practices in multiple domains such as self-driving cars, fraud detection, simulations in the and marketing industrial sectors known as digital twins, and medical imaging. The digital twin concept could readily apply to modelling and quantifying disease progression. In addition, GANs posses a multitude of capabilities relevant to common problems in the healthcare: augmenting small dataset, correcting class imbalance, domain translation for rare diseases, let alone preserving privacy. Unlocking open access to privacy-preserving OHD could be transformative for scientific research. In the COVID-19's midst, the healthcare system is facing unprecedented challenges , many of which of are data related and could be alleviated by the capabilities of GANs. Considering these facts, publications concerning the development of GAN applied to OHD seemed to be severely lacking. To uncover the reasons for the slow adoption of GANs for OHD, we broadly reviewed the published literature on the subject. Our findings show that the properties of OHD and evaluating the SD were initially challenging for the existing GAN algorithms (unlike medical imaging, for which state-of-the-art model were directly transferable) and the choice of metrics ambiguous. We find many publications on the subject, starting slowly in 2017 and since then being published at an increasing rate. The difficulties of OHD remain, and we discuss issues relating to evaluation, consistency, benchmarking, data modeling, and reproducibility.

This paper describes the Work in Progress (WiP) in the development of an educational Cyber-Physical-Social EcoSystem (CPSeS) using XR, AI, and Robotic technologies to support immersive learning. It is presenting the framework of the proposed CPSeS used to create an intelligent educational virtual environment which seamlessly blends the real with virtual worlds and is influenced by its users, real and artificial agents, and elements. The paper is an updated report of the WiP presented at iLRN 2020 conference, focusing on system additions and improvements, its current development status, and future plans and aspirations.

This manuscript discusses the key characteristics of the Digital Ecosystems (DEs) model, which, we argue, is particularly appropriate for connecting and orchestrating the many heterogeneous and autonomous online systems, infrastructures, and platforms that constitute the bedrock of a digitally transformed society. Big Data and AI systems have enabled the implementation of the Digital Twin paradigm (introduced first in the manufacturing sector) in all the sectors of society. DEs promise to be a flexible and operative framework that allow the development of local, national, and international Digital Twins. In particular, the “Digital Twins of the Earth” may generate the actionable
intelligence that is necessary to address global change challenges, facilitate the European Green transition, and contribute to realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. The case of the Destination Earth initiative and system is discussed in the manuscript as an example to address the broader DE concepts. In respect to the more traditional data and information infrastructural philosophy, DE solutions present important advantages as to flexibility and viability. However,
designing and implementing an effective collaborative DE is far more difficult than a traditional digital system. DEs require the definition and the governance of a metasystemic level, which is not necessary for a traditional information system. The manuscript discusses the principles, patterns, and architectural viewpoints characterizing a thriving DE supporting the generation and operation of “Digital Twins of the Earth”. The conclusions present a set of conditions, best practices, and base
capabilities for building a knowledge framework, which makes use of the Digital Twin paradigm and the DE approach to support decision makers with the SDG agenda implementation.

The automotive industry aims to deploy commercial level-5 fully autonomous self-driving vehicles (FA-SDVs) in a diverse range of benefit-driven concepts on city roads in the years to come. In all future visions of operating networks of FA-SDVs, humans are expected to intervene with some kind of remote supervisory role. Recent advances in cyber-physical systems (CPS) within the concept of Internet of Everything (IoE) using tactile internet (TI) teleport us to teleoperate remote objects within the cyber-world. Human-on-the-loop (HOTL) haptic teleoperation with an extension of human control and sensing capability by coupling with artificial sensors and actuators with an increased sense of real-time driving in the remote vehicle can help overcome the challenging tasks when the new driver-artificial intelligence (AI) agent-encounters an unorthodox situation that can't be addressed by the autonomous capabilities. This paper analyses HOTL real-time haptic delay-sensitive teleoperation with FA-SDVs, in the aspects of human-vehicle teamwork by establishing two similar remote parallel worlds-real-world vehicle time-varying environment and cyber-world emulation of this environment, i.e., digital twins (DTs)-in which a human telesupervisor (HTS), as a biological agent, can be immersed with no cybersickness enabling omnipresence through a timely bidirectional flow of energy and information. The experiments conducted as a proof of concept of HOTL haptic teleoperation regarding learning with human-vehicle collaboration show promising results and the potential of benefiting from the proposed framework. Index Terms-Autonomous vehicles, driverless vehicles, human-on-the-loop (HOTL), haptics, human-in-the-loop (HITL), human-vehicle coactivity, self-driving, tactile internet, teleoperation, digital twins, internet of vehicles (IoVs)

The current world is so unbelievably unexpected, unreal, unfriendly and abnormal.

Welcome to the ‘brave new world’ of:
+ a dangerous virus without a safe vaccine
+ people without safe physical contacts
+ supply chains without safe physical goods or safe physical delivery

How can digital transformation help now?

The present document introduces a set of principles and patterns to be applied by the Destination Earth ecosystem in order to match its stakeholders’ and users’ needs and requirements. They have been captured and articulated in a set of significant use cases, analysed in a previous study of the JRC. The presented well-defined principles are important to realize a flexible, evolvable, and viable Destination Earth ecosystem. Then, the document provides an architectural description of the ecosystem, applying a set of international standards for the definition of complex system architectures. Specific sections are dedicated to present and discuss the different concerns that characterize the Destination Earth system: the business, information, functional, engineering, and technological viewpoints. Then, a technological architecture, based on a virtual cloud platform enabled by a multi-cloud environment, is discussed. Finally, the results of a proof-of-concept implementation of such technology architecture are reported and discussed.

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value (e.g., prevention and treatment of disease, cost reduction, patient autonomy and freedom, equal treatment) but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks (e.g., privacy and property of data, disruption of existing societal structures, inequality and injustice). We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research. The digital twin finally peaks The idea of replicating humans is anything but new. Descartes was perhaps the first to ponder philosophically on the idea of such "automata" (Descartes 1980: 32) and contemporary philosophy is in fact replete with twin-like creatures such as "doppelgangers" (Putnam 1996), "zombies" (Kirk 2008), and "swamp-men" (Donald 1987). Interesting and controversial as such thought experiments might be, they are nothing but philosophical devicesthey are sometimes called "intuition pumps" because they are devised to trigger and direct our intuition (Dennett 2013). But nowadays, such improbable twin versions of humans are approaching reality. Recent research on the topic of 'digital twins' has created the possibility of a dynamic (i.e., constantly updated) replica of the human body or at least some parts of the human body (

This manuscript discusses the key characteristics of the Digital Ecosystems (DEs) model, which, we argue, is particularly appropriate for connecting and orchestrating the many heterogeneous and autonomous online systems, infrastructures, and platforms that constitute the bedrock of a digitally transformed society. Big Data and AI systems have enabled the implementation of the Digital Twin paradigm (introduced first in the manufacturing sector) in all the sectors of society. DEs promise to be a flexible and operative framework that allow the development of local, national, and international Digital Twins. In particular, the “Digital Twins of the Earth” may generate the actionable intelligence that is necessary to address global change challenges, facilitate the European Green transition, and contribute to realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. The case of the Destination Earth initiative and system is discussed in the manuscript as an example to address the broa...

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to develop a generic framework of a digital twin (DT)-based automated construction progress monitoring through reality capture to extended reality (RC-to-XR).Design/methodology/approachIDEF0 data modeling method has been designed to establish an integration of reality capturing technologies by using BIM, DTs and XR for automated construction progress monitoring. Structural equation modeling (SEM) method has been used to test the proposed hypotheses and develop the skill model to examine the reliability, validity and contribution of the framework to understand the DRX model's effectiveness if implemented in real practice.FindingsThe research findings validate the positive impact and importance of utilizing technology integration in a logical framework such as DRX, which provides trustable, real-time, transparent and digital construction progress monitoring.Practical implicationsDRX system captures accurate, real-time and comprehensive data a...

Background: The digital transformation is a technological revolution that now penetrates all aspects of society, including health and care systems. To digitalize business processes in health and care, new concepts and innovative solutions are needed. Health is a self-evident concept yet, at the same time, it is extremely elusive because no precise definition of it has been provided. Digitizing the health of individuals to enable data analytics methods to support healthcare professionals is an important objective in the digitalization of decision making processes. This article introduces the "health digital state" (HDS) as a digital equivalent to the "health" concept. The HDS shapes the knowledge that underpins the decisions of healthcare professionals when diagnosing and establishing treatment. The article also introduces the Smart EHR system, an infrastructure platform for EHRs designed to assist healthcare professionals in making decisions using the HDS. Method: 1. We begin by analyzing the possibility of quantifying health in order to digitize it. 2. We hypothesize that at the time of diagnosis specific mental representations of the patient's health are formed in the minds of healthcare professionals. We call these "induced health states" (IHSs). 3. With the help of a Smart EHR system, IHSs can be captured and digitized as "digitized induced health states" (DIHSs). 4. Smart EHR can use existing DIHSs to obtain a patient's HDS. 5. We consider HDS to be a digital equivalent of the concept of health that can be used in the digitalization of diagnostic and treatment processes. Results: For each individual, Smart EHR uses a Virtual Health Record (VHR) to generate an intelligent agent that acts as an avatar for the individual's health. It interacts with healthcare professionals, providing information on any aspect of an individual's health, proactively offering solutions, and helping them diagnose and decide on the right treatment.

Structural Integrity 2018
1st International Conference on Structural Integrity of Offshore Energy Industry, Aberdeen, September 6-7, 2018, http://asranet.co.uk/Conferences/SI

Structural Integrity 2018 will be a 'boutique' conferences with some 50 papers and 100 participants, and strongly cantered around its topic. It will bring together a 50/50 mix of international academics and industry, facilitating interactions between the two sectors.

The marine, offshore and subsea energy industry continues to evolve creating new challenges and risks for the safety, integrity and reliability of its structures and systems. For example, wells are being drilled at greater depths, pressures and temperatures, requiring enhanced assessment of the integrity of structures and systems in such extreme conditions. There is a push to expand operations into new locations such as the Arctic, where environmental and operational conditions are considerably harsher. Many assets in the North Sea are rapidly reaching or have already exceeded their original design life and safe but affordable life extension and decommissioning are becoming major objectives. The recent rapid developments in renewable energy technologies have introduced new challenges of maintaining at minimum cost the reliability and integrity of structures and equipment in remote locations and subjected to extreme loads and environmental conditions. There are also exciting new opportunities, but also significant challenges and uncertainties, in applying structural health and condition monitoring and the novel concepts of additive manufacturing and big data to safety and structural integrity. These and many additional themes will be covered during the conference through survey, focused and/or case studies presentations from the practitioners and researchers in the art and science of structural integrity. Keynote and invited lectures from eminent members of the structural integrity community will also be part of the program.

The list of confirmed keynote and invited speakers includes:
- Prof. John Sorensen (Aalborg University, Denmark),
- Prof. Isabel Hadley (TWI, UK),
- Ulf Tyge Tygesen (Ramboll, Denmark),
- Dr Ramsay Fraser (BP, UK),
- Dr Yuri Tkach (Wood, UK),
- Einar Landet, DNVGL, and

Special issues of two major-publisher, per-reviewed, international journals will be prepared comprising extended versions of selected papers presented at the conference, as follows:
- Elsevier’s International Journal of Fatigue for papers focusing on fatigue. See call for papers at https://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-fatigue/call-for-papers/call-for-papersspecial-issue-on-fatigue-in-structural-integr.
- Taylor & Francis’ Journal of Structural Integrity and Management for all other conference themes http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/est/jsim/2018-si1?utm_source=CPB&utm_medium=cms&utm_campaign=JMQ04365

Conference Themes:
· Fatigue, fracture and corrosion
· Deterministic deterioration models and analysis
· Probabilistic deterioration models and analysis
· Dealing with uncertainty in structural integrity assessment
· Structural integrity under extreme loads and in extreme environments
· Structural integrity of fixed, floating and submerged structures
· Structural integrity of pipes and risers
· Structural integrity of wind and tidal turbines and wave energy extractors
· Life-cycle assessment, asset integrity management decisions and optimization
· Safe and efficient asset life extension
· Structural integrity in decommissioning
· Reusable structures and repowering
· Design for extended safe lifespan
· Component and system reliability
· Probabilistic computational mechanics
· Multi-scale material, defect and damage modelling
· Structural health and condition monitoring
· Intelligent use of monitored data
· ‘Digital twins’ for structural integrity
· Structural integrity of additively manufactured materials
· Case studies in structural integrity, safety and reliability
We would also like to encourage you and your collaborators and students to submit abstracts, and later papers, and attend the conference. Group discounts may be discussed for larger groups of attendees with shared affiliation.

We hope to welcome you to Aberdeen in September.

Kind regards,

Organizers:
Prof. Purnendu Das (ASRANET https://www.asranet.co.uk/)
Dr Piotr Omenzetter (University of Aberdeen, UK, [email protected], https://www.abdn.ac.uk/engineering/people/profiles/piotr.omenzetter)

La simulación es una herramienta de análisis y de toma de decisiones ampliamente utilizada en la actualidad y constituye uno de los pilares de los gemelos digitales. El gemelo digital es un elemento esencial para Industria 4.0, que permite modelar e integrar información relevante sobre el comportamiento de los sistemas productivos. Esta investigación se centra en la obtención de un modelo de simulación de uno de los procesos que se desarrollan en la Empresa de Mensajería y Cambio Internacional, para demostrar la utilidad del mismo y sentar las bases para la futura implementación de un gemelo digital. Para el desarrollo del modelo de simulación se siguió una metodología de siete fases que abarca: planteamiento del problema, recogida de datos, desarrollo del modelo de simulación, verificación y validación, explotación del modelo, análisis de los problemas detectados y propuesta de mejoras. El modelo fue obtenido en el software Arena, con los datos resultantes del cronometraje de las actividades del proceso y la información brindada por la empresa. Del análisis del modelo se extraen  para la toma de decisiones en el proceso como el tiempo que toma procesar un envío y la utilización de los recursos de la empresa.

Building Information Management (BIM) in facility management has been successfully implemented over the past several years. However, owners are still struggling to move towards the next level of advanced simulations, such as digital twins and augmented reality. This paper provides a literature review on the existing successful national and international implementation of advanced simulations in facility management. Furthermore, a conceptual framework is developed for moving towards the next generation of advanced technologies in capital projects in a large institutional owner, the Office of Physical Plant (OPP) at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) which is a leading institution of BIM adoption for facility management in the US. Finally, a potential use case is identified in which advanced technology can be utilized and potential benefits could be tracked. Future research includes developing a taxonomy for advanced simulation implementation in facility management for large institutional owners.

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed s...

A Digital Twin is a virtual replica of a living or non-living physical entity, leveraging IoT (Inter-net of Things) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies to create living simulation models that update and change themselves as their physical counterparts change.
A Personal Digital Twin (PDT) is a virtual version of an individual (a natural person), built from her/his digital footprints. A PDT is also known as “the algorithm of you”  . Commonly, a PDT is intended to be generated and managed for keeping the natural and virtual twins synchronized to recognize personal preferences and needs as well as behavioural changes.
Digital Twin and PDT concepts are going to evolve quickly, it is important to address them with an innovative and futuristic approach. The Digital Twin general cyber-physical pattern is going to model and simulate most natural entities and processes, including human beings. Therefore, we must be ready to leverage, control, and regulate the DT of natural persons: PDTs.
Differently from objects (i.e. non-living entities), a person has a social dimensionality and a behavioural autonomy. These two aspects are critical when we talk about PDTs; they must be carefully considered and safeguarded in the next era of PDTs. With the advent of the cyber-space domain and the use of autonomous PDTs, it could be difficult to recognize who is the natural person and who is his/her digital twin.
A further challenge arises from the fact that living beings (natural persons) die, while digital twins can survive his/her natural counterpart. Important cyber-security issues must be faced soon.

The big commercial Internet platforms have been using unprecedented level of processing and insight extraction of exabytes-worth of personal data to deliver fine-grained insights about behaviours, needs, and prospects of a population, up to its in-dividual level. It is likely that PDTs will be developed and operated by digital ecosystems including private and public organizations and capacities. Their governance actions should also include education, training, and capacity building to exploit the innovative fields of both DTs and PDTs. In keeping with the Data act proposal, PDTs might contribute to the provision (in near-Real-Time) of the information required by government to face crises and emergencies.
Nowadays, enterprises make fruitful use of the Digital Twin interaction paradigm and PDT, developing data-intensive techniques that are known as customer digital DNA models. Derived from personal data (e.g. customer data), the digital DNA is the complete view an organization (e.g. an enterprise) gains into their users/clients (e.g. customers). In the marketing domain, the customer digital DNA represents a customer’s unique behaviour and tastes. This enables organizations to create personalized and relevant customer experiences. PDTs are more and more utilized in the healthcare and automotive sectors. PDTs promise to revolutionize the G2C (Govern-to-Citizen) platform and services.

Stakeholders involved in generating and running PDTs are several and diverse. As in the case of any cyber-physical system, governance and control are two critical factors. There is the need for a regulatory (and standard) framework to safeguard natural persons, apply the European ethic and fairness principles, and create new opportunities to the European single digital market –see, for example, the recent Data Act and Data Service Act proposals, which are intended to complement and extend the GDPR regulation.
In the case of autonomous PDTs (i.e. those with a trained algorithm capable of providing the twin with an autonomous behaviour), it is essential to implement a control of the twin behaviour engaging the natural counterpart. It is recommended to provide a human-centric vision of these diverse governances –the recent AI Act proposal is a valuable example in this regard.

PDTs will further shift the human intuition of space and time dimension, accelerating the systematic move of our society to the Metaverse. It is already possible to envision a sort of "avatar economy", where each of us can unleash around the various meta worlds one or more instances of “myself” with the task of exploring, learning, communicating, selling, buying. The implications for our society are going to be massive and introduce profound economic, anthropological, sociological, and psychological changes.

This manuscript discusses the key characteristics of the Digital Ecosystems (DEs) model, which, we argue, is particularly appropriate for connecting and orchestrating the many heterogeneous and autonomous online systems, infrastructures, and platforms that constitute the bedrock of a digitally transformed society. Big Data and AI systems have enabled the implementation of the Digital Twin paradigm (introduced first in the manufacturing sector) in all the sectors of society. DEs promise to be a flexible and operative framework that allow the development of local, national, and international Digital Twins. In particular, the “Digital Twins of the Earth” may generate the actionable intelligence that is necessary to address global change challenges, facilitate the European Green transition, and contribute to realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. The case of the Destination Earth initiative and system is discussed in the manuscript as an example to address the broa...

Through the prism of the 8th Digital Earth Summit and within the context of the disastrous 2020, this article addresses some of the issues and challenges that need to be addressed in Digital Earth Vision 2030. Some significant scientific aspects of the Digital Earth development are described and briefly discussed: the problem of providing a satisfactory definition of the Digital Earth and typology of different geospatial visualizations, the ambiguity between the concepts of Digital Earth and Digital Twins, the problems arising from the use of Digital Earth in sustainable development as well as the problem of using Digital Earth for natural and technological disasters prevention and mitigation. Attention is given to the use of Digital Earth in exploring the key challenge of 2020 – the COVID-19 pandemic. The possibility of using the Digital Earth as a tool for fundamental research is declared.

Purpose-The purpose of this research is to develop a generic framework of a digital twin (DT)-based automated construction progress monitoring through reality capture to extended reality (RC-to-XR). Design/methodology/approach-IDEF0 data modeling method has been designed to establish an integration of reality capturing technologies by using BIM, DTs and XR for automated construction progress monitoring. Structural equation modeling (SEM) method has been used to test the proposed hypotheses and develop the skill model to examine the reliability, validity and contribution of the framework to understand the DRX model's effectiveness if implemented in real practice. Findings-The research findings validate the positive impact and importance of utilizing technology integration in a logical framework such as DRX, which provides trustable, real-time, transparent and digital construction progress monitoring. Practical implications-DRX system captures accurate, real-time and comprehensive...

Through the prism of the 8th Digital Earth Summit and within the context of the disastrous 2020, this article addresses some of the issues and challenges that need to be addressed in Digital Earth Vision 2030. Some significant scientific aspects of the Digital Earth development are described and briefly discussed: the problem of providing a satisfactory definition of the Digital Earth and typology of different geospatial visualizations, the ambiguity between the concepts of Digital Earth and Digital Twins, the problems arising from the use of Digital Earth in sustainable development as well as the problem of using Digital Earth for natural and technological disasters prevention and mitigation. Attention is given to the use of Digital Earth in exploring the key challenge of 2020the COVID-19 pandemic. The possibility of using the Digital Earth as a tool for fundamental research is declared.

Implementing the concept of a digital twin in full production provides enough data on each individual assembly for real-time control of production processes. Taking advantage of this opening, this paper proposes individualized locator adjustments as a new method to improve the geometrical quality of assemblies. In this method, all locators in the assembly fixture can be adjusted for each individual assembly based on the scan data of the mating parts of that assembly. The optimal adjustment of every locator for each individual assembly is obtained using an optimization algorithm and nonrigid variation simulation tools (computer-aided tolerancing tools). This method is applied to three industrial cases and geometrical variations and the mean deviation from nominal positions are compared to nonindividualized adjustments and also when there are no adjustments. The results show that applying this method, an improvement of up to 81% in geometrical variation and 78% in the mean deviation of assemblies can be obtained compared to assemblies without adjustments. These improvements are 60% and 57% higher than nonindividualized adjustments of locators for the variation and the mean deviation, respectively. Moreover, a modification on the optimization algorithm has been proposed that reduces the amount of required adjustments.