Digital doubles

Digital doubles are a digital (virtual) model of all objects, systems, people, processes and environments. The digital double tracks the past and predicts the future. It accurately reproduces the shape and actions of the original and is synchronized with it.

The direction of digital doppelgangers is quite young. It is in the phase of active growth, gaining experience of practical implementations, and at the same time the process of formation of terminology base.Nevertheless, the outlines of uniform approaches to the concept of ?digital double? that can be used in practical activities are already visible.

A digital double is needed to simulate what will happen to the original in one or another environment. This helps, first, to save time and money (for example, when it comes to complex and expensive equipment), and secondly - to avoid harm to people and the environment.?For example, aircraft engine digital doubles are used to control production and operation, digital doubles for manufacturing or process optimization. Recently, digital human counterparts have also been used: they are actively used in medicine to plan and practice surgical operations.

A digital double is more than just a static model, like a building plan or a three-dimensional model of some hardware. It reflects the current state of the entity, relying on real-time telemetry provided by IoT sensors.

The digital double does not only reflect the current state of the object in real time. It also has such a deep understanding of the phenomenon that it can predict the future state based on current data. This is the distinctive feature of digital doubles, which separates them from the previous generation of current status monitoring technologies.

There are different types of digital doubles. For example, the prototype represents properties and parameters of a future, not yet existing object. It is used in the design and creation of products. Another species, the instance, is a copy of a specific real object and accompanies it throughout its life cycle, changing with it.?Finally, there are aggregated instances - duplicates of several objects. They allow the simulation of group behavior, which is not always the simple sum of individual patterns.

Digital doubles help reduce risks in oil and gas production and processing. This saves lives and environmental damage and saves huge sums of money.

At a European refinery, Schneider Electric’s predictive (predictive) analytics system predicted a large compressor failure 25 days before it occurred. This saved the company several million dollars.

In industry, technology is already today helping to increase efficiency by at least 10%, and in the oil industry - to save from 5% to 20% of capital investment. In the coming years, large companies will move to remote monitoring and management of whole production and all units through virtual systems.

The same will happen to cities: they will have digital counterparts that link all critical systems, areas and urban infrastructure. Online monitoring will be carried out with IoT sensors, scanners and machine-trained drones, and the virtual systems will be placed in the cloud.