Digital Twins for Infrastructures
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In the Digital Twins for Infrastructures department, we use the concept of the Digital Twin as a tool to improve the resilience of critical infrastructures. A Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a physical object, process or system. The Digital Twin is updated in real time with data collected by sensors and other sensing devices in the physical counterpart. This data enables accurate replication and monitoring of the real object or process.
The resilience of an infrastructure describes its ability to maintain its performance despite internal or external influences. We can check and improve this with the help of the Digital Twin. The Digital Twin enables a continuous exchange of information between the real infrastructure and its virtual representation.
With the help of models, we carry out extensive analyses in the Digital Twin and transfer the results to the real infrastructure. We use not only current information, but also historical data as well as simulation and visualization methods. This allows us to assess and continuously improve the resilience of the infrastructure under consideration in almost any situation:
- Identification of protection concepts: Based on these findings, the necessary protective measures for the infrastructures are analyzed and derived.
- Adaptation to dangers: During a crisis, the real infrastructure adapts to the risks and threats with the help of the Digital Twin.
- Simulation of threats: Before and during all phases of a crisis, threats and effects on infrastructures can be simulated using data and models.
Currently, it is still very time-consuming and cost-intensive to create the required Digital Twins, as this requires a high level of manual labor. At the same time, infrastructure operators only have short preparation times in a crisis situation, as rapid action is required and delays usually jeopardize human lives. Our department is therefore working on developing methods to create Digital Twins in a highly automated manner and therefore in the shortest possible time.
To facilitate the use of the Digital Twin, we want to offer various options for interaction - from simple user interfaces to virtual reality. The latter, in combination with the Digital Twin and the simulation tools it contains, can also create a realistic training environment in a virtual world that is connected to the real world. The twin will also be operated within a resilient cloud infrastructure. One of the advantages of this is that crisis management team members can access it from anywhere and work together from any location.
Various projects are currently underway in the department, including the Automated Model Generation project, in which we are focusing on the automated creation of Digital Twins. We frequently collaborate with various universities, companies and other partners on our projects.
Our latest publications can be found in the publications section.