Exploring interoperability of computational models and digital twins

As digital representations of the physical environment, digital twins play an important role in supporting decision-making in various areas such as mobility, housing, and climate adaptation. The aim of this exploration is to understand how computation models, which are essential for the functioning of digital twins, can work together and how they can be shared in a way that contributes to efficiency, saving time and costs, and increasing the public value of digital twins. This ‘Explore interoperability of computation models and digital twins’ focuses on exploring the possibility of integrating computation models into digital twins in a modular, service-oriented and interoperable way.The exploration was carried out as part of the Dutch Metropolitan Innovations (DMI) program, an innovation initiative that focuses on developing a digital ecosystem for sustainable, smart cities as a collaboration between governments, companies, and knowledge institutions. This study looked at the interoperability of computation models in digital twins from a legal, organizational, semantic and technical perspective. In addition, the report makes recommendations for a further contribution to the interoperability of computation models within the context of digital twins that are applied in the physical environment.The findings in this report are based on a combination of interviews with 20 Dutch experts from the field of computation models and digital twins, on desk research and an expert workshop. The results provide insight into best practices, developments, innovations and challenges surrounding the integration of computation models in digital twins. The exploration points out that the interoperability of computation models in digital twins is of great importance for the realization of applications that require more complex or integral considerations, such as those that come together in the ambitions around sustainable cities. This can be achieved by developing collaboration, agreements and standardization and modular digital twins, which facilitate the sharing and reuse of computation models and computational infrastructure. The collaboration between the many different parties involved and the creation of an open infrastructure for computation models are also key to the success of using digital twins to support policy, planning and decision-making on complex issues in the physical environment. The main findings of the reconnaissance are: