Digital Twin – An Emerging Technology for Geospatial World

Our world is changing and becoming high – tech. Everything is being abstracted and modelled by digital twins. They use automation to improve business processes, reduce risk, maximise operational efficiencies, and improve decision-making by predicting outcomes. By establishing relationships and standardising workflows, digital twins add information to the solution of business problems. GIS (geographic information system) technology is the foundation of any digital twin.

The integration of geospatial technology, building information modelling (BIM), and interactive 3D has fueled a discourse about "Digital Twins" and how they can be used to model single facilities, entire cities in recent years.

Digital Twin

A virtual illustration of the real world, including material things, processes, relationships, and behavioural patterns, is known as a digital twin. GIS generates digital twins of built and natural environment and incorporates a wide range of digital models. Digital Twins are virtual portrayals of the real world, including physical objects, processes, relationships, and behaviours. When we talk about digital twins in GIS, we usually mean virtual models of real-world assets or natural systems, as well as information models, data, reports, analyses, and user experiences designed to capture state, monitor performance, and predict future outcomes. Digital twins can be used to represent current, past, or even future states of assets, and they may not exactly reflect what exists in the real world today.

The digital twin idea emerged in the product manufacturing sector. Precise digital models of complex forms, such as aeroplanes or automobiles, can be stored in a database for reporting, analysis, modelling and testing the performance of the object. The original digital twin concept aided in shifting the use of data about in an asset away from financial and cost-accounting purposes and toward management and operational analysis, which could then be executed back into the financial perspective of the asset's manufacture and marketing.

Data Capture and Integration

Digital twins are transforming how businesses capture and visualise data, incorporating networks, and analyse data.

• Data modelling
• System connectivity and management
• System connectivity and management
• Creating and extracting features
• Processes and business systems

Real time and visualization

With real-time information and an instructive network, individuals can make the best decisions, explore new patterns, and unleash the power of data.

Ø  Dashboards and reporting

Ø  Real-time Internet of Things (IoT) integration

Ø  Insights and analytics

Ø  Advanced visualization

Communication and sharing

GIS technology helps smart individuals and organisations by increasing information sharing, removing data silos, and increasing public and private interaction.

• Powerful visual communication
• Participation and collaboration
• Widespread data access
• Transparency of information

It's enticing to think about how a model of fixed physical assets can help you recognise performance, expenditures, and manufacturing. Extending the digital twin idea to inhabited systems which include continuing human interaction such as operation and maintenance becomes more interesting, but also increases complexity. The digital twin concept adds realism, engaging user experience, and high-resolution 3D and 4D models of assets and systems to older technologies and methods for data warehousing, and object-based data models to older techniques and technologies for data warehousing, and entity data models.

GIS advancements for Digital Twin

If the main objective of a digital twin is to symbolise historical accuracy, view performance, or forecasting future state, then the inclusion of GIS data about the asset and GIS framework around the asset benefits any digital twin of a fixed asset or real-world system directly. GIS could be used to develop digital twins of the built and natural environments, as well as to incorporate new visual representations of the real world.

Geospatial network connects various types of data and systems to form a unified perception that can be obtained throughout the project's life cycle. GIS improves data capture and integration, leads to better real-time visualisation, offers detailed analysis and automation of future projections, and facilitates communication and cooperation.