2 Digital Twin Applications you should know in 2022

Included in many strategic plans for 2022, Digital Twins were up to the promise of one of the most beneficial technologies for industries in 2021. The technology has grown from a concept to a mainstream billion-dollar market that will grow from S$4.6 billion in 2022 to US$33.9 billion in 2030 at a 28% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) according to ABI Research’s 2022 Trend Report.?

This sudden popularity of the technology brought up many questions about how can you make a Digital Twin, the price, and the time spent to develop and apply the technology. Some of them were misconceptions that the technology was too expensive and time-consuming.?

In general, Digital Twins offer a holistic approach, allowing industrial leaders to cross past, present, and future data in an online environment. If connected with other technologies, the result can be even better.?

However, it’s not only the heavy industry that can take advantage of the benefits of Digital Twin. Civil construction, which used similar but primary technology, BIM, is having its firsts applications studies using Digital Twin, and even Pharmaceutical companies are taking different approaches to the technology. Here are some examples:?

1. A Digital Version of you?

Have you ever imagined a medical assistance system 100% customized? It may sound like science fiction, but that is what company Philips is trying to do. Inspired by the Digital Twin applications in industrial assets, the company tries to make a digital patient with the same idea. In asset integrity management, the company explains,?

“The challenge is to identify potential problems before they occur, so you can schedule maintenance at a time when the equipment is not in use.”?

Is in this idea of predictive maintenance of industrial assets, that Phillips believes the technology could also indicate diagnosis and treatments even before the disease manifestation. They explain:?

“When we started developing these services within Philips, we collated technical data from over 15,000 MRI scanner, CT, and interventional X-ray systems – analyzing billions of data points. After curating the data, using machine learning (AI) and other analytical methods, we were, in fact, able to identify patterns that foreshadow specific impending issues.”?

Although the company still hasn't developed a fully digital client, on a smaller scale they are collecting, connecting, and analyzing data to achieve the goal.?

2. America’s first Digital Twin city??

Civil construction is already known for the use of 3D and BIM models of buildings but the idea of a Digital Twin of an entire city is completely new. One of the first public administrations to invest in this idea was the city-state of Singapore, which combined Digital Twin with Big Data, IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), cloud computing, and AR (Augmented Reality), for testing water supply, sewage, and electric systems solutions. The hope was to improve factors like energy efficiency and improvement of city life.?

But America is also investing in smart cities. According to ABI Research, by 2025 more than 500 Digital Twins will be deployed globally. In the United States (US), there are already 2 examples of cities that are deploying the technology.?

In Boulder, Colorado, they are creating “on-the-fly scenarios to help visualize the areas that would be impacted by proposed urban development” and one of the results was the cutting-down of a complex 400-hour workflow to a simpler three-step process.?

Boston, the biggest city in Massachusetts, was seeking technologies that would allow quick visualization of the impact of projects in the city landscape and found Digital Twin a good way to solve this problem. Now, they use the city Digital Twin to measure the impacts of developments on parking, energy use, carbon emissions, and waste.?

“Carolyn Bennett, deputy director of GIS for BPDA, hopes to advance planning workflows by integrating developers' project submissions seamlessly into the smart model, and also eventually designing the model to be able to conduct suitability and growth capacity analyses.”?

As it was mentioned in the last Future Oil and Gas Conference, the Digital Twin is the closest thing we have to predicting the future, and we are very close to doing so. Not only industries can benefit from this technology, but different sectors can and should be, looking for Digital Twin solutions.?