Digital Twin Applications : A first systemization of their dimensions

The computer-based representation of "things" in the real world is at the heart of today’s virtual engineering practices. Digital Twin (DT) is a term that receives significant attention in academia and business within this domain. Despite its appealing metaphorical strength, people use it to describe quite different applications with specific conceptual backgrounds, goals and approaches. This paper aims to provide a first systematic classification about DT applications to support follow-up research. The first part of this paper focuses on three application cases described in the academic literature. It analyzes their conceptual background, the targeted problem and the implemented use case. The result of this analysis are seven dimensions that categorize the presented DT applications. They include distinctions of goals, focused users, life cycle phases, system levels, data sources, authenticity and data exchange levels.