Technology and innovations have powered the evolution of Industry4.0, the fourth industrial revolution.
State-of-the-art technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing (CC), big data analytics (BDA), and artificial intelligence (AI) – all part of Industry4.0, have greatly stimulated the building industry. Digital Тwin is a significant enabler for Industry 4.0 initiatives. Within Industry 4.0, the amount of digital product information generated and collected over the entire lifecycle has been growing.
Although digital twins have been around for several decades, the rapid rise of the internet of things (IoT) is that they have become more widely considered as a tool of the future. Digital twins are getting attention because they also integrate things like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to bring data, algorithms, and context together
A ―digital twin‖—or digital replica of a physical entity—can target building industry in several sub-areas:
– Facility management
– Product Lifecycle Management
– Smart Buildings
– Smart energy
All these areas are one giant step further by creating a Digital Twin — a virtual representation of real-world buildings that can be viewed and scrutinized in minute detail. This research describes business cases and best practices in design of IoT Solutions for building industry, powered by Digital Twins. A reference architecture and prototypes which demonstrate application of Digital Twins in Smart are created as a result of this study .This research is technology agnostic, but prototypes of sample solutions are considered in the context of Microsoft Azure (Azure solutions, covering Azure Digital Twins Service and Azure IoT Stack.)