Water Resources Infrastructure Digital Twins: Design, Development, and Future Efforts

The US Army Corps of Engineers is developing and demonstrating the digital twin concept for flood risk management projects. Digital twins are being demonstrated beginning September 2022 at two flood control dams using existing technologies. A digital twin is a virtual representation of physical assets, processes, people, places, systems, and devices that provides both the elements and the dynamics of how the system operates and lives throughout its life cycle. Digital twins integrate data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and software analytics with spatial networking to create living digital simulation models that update as their physical counterpart changes. A baseline framework was established for implementation of version 1.0 digital twins. Version 1.0 of the digital twins is focused on producing facility-specific decision-support information identified by dam facility personnel. These two systems will reveal best practices and result in information technology (IT) products that are scalable, expandable, and reusable for many other infrastructure types. The major components of this effort are the IT system framework, remote sensing and spatial data, user interface and visualization, and performance prediction and risk analytics. This paper describes the digital twin system design, the current system framework, the status of the efforts, lessons learned, and future research needs to effectively implement digital twins.