An Architecture and Information Meta-model for Back-end Data Access via Digital Twins

The lifecycle data of industrial devices is typically maintained in separate data sources operating in silos. The lack of interoperability between the data sources due to the usage of different APIs, data formats and data models results in time-consuming and error-prone manual data exchange efforts. The notion of digital twins is known to be a solution to the data silo problem and the associated interoperability issues. Despite many studies on digital twins, there is still a need for common architectures that offer means for defining digital twins, ingesting backend data in the digital twins, and enabling interoperable data exchange across the lifecycle of the devices via their digital twins. This paper aims to close this gap by proposing a cloud-based architecture, a common information meta-model for defining the digital twins, and variety of APIs to query the lifecycle data of interest via the digital twins.