Towards Architectural Coordination for Digital Twins

Abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) carry the promise of supporting better decision-making, monitoring, and learning in relation to the twinned entity, by integrating novel technologies, including digital models, symbolic and sub-symbolic artificial intelligence, as well as advanced optimisation, simulation, and visualisation techniques. However, delivering such a promise requires considerable investments, which can only valorise in the long run, as DTs tend to be ‘data hungry’, in need of ample sensors, actuators and serious computing power. Yet, most current approaches to DT development focus on isolated scenarios, which not only limits the understanding of the value of DTs, but also their broader implications. The introduction of DTs, generally, also entails a wider digital transformation in an (inter-)organisational context, while such transformations need to be properly managed. We also observe that, since DTs are fundamentally a class of (highly advanced) information systems, this inevitably makes them an integral part of an enterprise’s broader (inter-organisational) portfolio of information systems. In line with this, we argue that, in order to (also) improve the socio-economical sustainability of DT solutions, their development, deployment and evolution need to be subject to architectural coordination within the broader frame of enterprise architecture management (EAM). From this perspective, we discuss some potential directions of research in (enterprise) architectural coordination of DT development, in order to help address some crucial challenges of socio-economically sustainable development and evolution of DTs as part of a broader portfolio of information systems.