数字双胞胎技术是企业试图获得最大的实物资产，并越来越多地尝试复杂的系统，诸如智能城市，石油和天然气供应链的系统研究机构的吸引力。
上个月的数字双联盟的声明是企图使数字双技术比以往任何时候都更强大和易用性，经过处理的减慢其发展的关键问题之一：互操作性。该财团是对象管理集团，微软，戴尔，ANSYS和Lendlease，以及许多其他支持的主持下，一个开放标准组织。
Digital twins are, put simply, virtual copies of real-world pieces of equipment. The idea is to offer a way to let the designers, manufacturers and operators of that equipment turn real-world data into accurate predictions and simulations of what might happen in various use cases. Creating a digital twin involves physicists, mathematicians and data scientists projecting how real-world forces affect the equipment being simulated. The systems being twinned can be as simple as对于汽车里程计算器or as complicated as a model of an entire city’s traffic patterns.
在它的最高水平，数字孪生是一种管理工具，根据Gartner研究分析师和副总统阿尔·Velosa。它抽象了一层复杂性进行监视和管理系统的基本流程。
“我不在乎你如何让那件事或处理数据，我只想说的数据，所以我可以做出更好的决定，”他说。
需要数字结对的仪器和数据收集工作，经常靠物联网sensors, and the two technologies are closely intertwined. Gartner said last year that, while few businesses are currently using digital twins operationally, nearly two-thirds of those they surveyed had plans to begin using them in the near future.
Most early digital twins – and the technology is still relatively new, so this encompasses many of the digital twins being used today – are fairly simple. A turbine on a wind farm has a digital twin that its manufacturer can look at to see whether it’s working correctly, and the operator of the farm can look at for maintenance purposes. If that’s all a system is supposed to do, there’s no problem.
比方说，智能建筑，环境传感器，HVAC控制，照明和安全工具 - - 进入同一型号然而，试图把大量的对象时出现的问题。该系统的各种组件站在同一制造商都来了，更不用说使用可互操作的网络协议，因此它可以非常复杂，试图建立所有这些系统合并为整个建筑的连贯数字双察觉的机会。
Forrester首席分析师保罗·米勒表示，这是该领域的主要挑战的时刻，并在该技术的前进方向的指标。
“We’re moving from a world where digital twins are small and company-specific to a world where there large and have more stakeholders,” he said. “To do that, they need some of these standards to be more established.”
That’s where the DTC and other standards organizations come in. By creating open-source standards for sensors and other equipment made by a wide array of different companies, across a diverse set of verticals, the potential to create larger and more complex digital twins can be realized.
There are really two aims behind the creation of an organization like the DTC, according to the group’s executive director Richard Soley, who has been a part of the larger Object Management Group since 1989. Along with smoothing the way for open standards to play a larger part in the development of digital twins, the group is focused on getting the technology into as many markets as possible.
But the nature of many of those markets, which include infrastructure, aerospace and defense, and mining, oil and gas, means that there’s some entrenched resistance, since most vendors in those verticals have a lot of proprietary technology that they’re eager to protect.
“你必须采取说服他们能有一个更大的一杯羹，而不是在一个大馅饼小片的供应商时，”索利说。
米勒说，一旦它变得更清晰的是什么，他们被要求共享不一定是他们的商业机密至关重要从供应商处的阻力可以缓解。
“Yes, there are areas of intellectual property you want to keep under wraps, but there are other aspects that there’s no disadvantage in sharing,” he said. “The voltage generated by a wind turbine isn’t something that needs to be hidden.”
Velosa表示,该财团的早期关注s likely to be in connected buildings, given the identity of the major backers.