Do we need a Digital Twin Standards Roadmap?

By Robyn Francis | Global Engagement Coordinator | Smart Cities Council

The Draft Australia New Zealand Digital Twin Blueprint includes a recommendation that “It is recommended that Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand develop respective national Digital Twin Standards Roadmap for their nations.”

The purpose of this roundtable is to test this recommendation, discuss it and determine if there is support for it.

Questions we will look to explore include:

• What Digital Twin standards related work is currently underway?

• What priority areas does industry have for Digital Twin standards?

• Is there ‘supporting’ foundational work required before Digital Twin standards can be developed?

• Would a Digital Twin Standards Roadmap help deliver a better Digital Twin marketplace?

• What would such a roadmap focus on?

• What happens after a roadmap is developed?

Starting things off, Adam Beck took us through the situation. There are three standards, for which the ink is still wet leaving us in a digital twin standards vacuum.

As a result, the draft Australian and New Zealand Blueprint recommended that a digital twin standards roadmap be developed for the nations.

Updates will be shared as the Digital Twin Challenge cohort works to actively outline where standards can catalyze and accelerate the digital twin journey.

We heard from Digital Twin Standards by Standards Australia who shared that they are putting together a standards advisory group to support the digital twin marketplace. They’re also working on the creation of two documents, one to outline concepts and standardisation and the other use cases that can be shared with the digital twin economy.

Onto the forum, we started off by getting an understanding of the audience, with most currently actively contributing to the development of standards, before looking at immediate priorities for the audience in terms of types of standards, rather than verticals with an interesting discussion following on how to progress the rollout of standards. We also walked through how to define and build out the various elements - strategic, process and technical.

Standards Australia touched on the AI roadmap, as well as their aim to work broadly alongside other sectors such as health and manufacturing to coordinate stakeholder engagement and collaborate on proposals that will benefit the sector as a whole.

Turning to the required components of a Digital Twin roadmap, we looked at what comprises a digital twin with a view to digging into maturity and minimum scope, certification and verification, using the Standards Australia framework for AI as a backbone for discussion.

With the attendees sharing invaluable experience, insights and thought-provoking points of view, there was a lot to take in. We’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks as part of our Digital Twin Standards series, where we’ll unpack key learnings from this session.

A recording of this session will be made available on the Smart Cities Academy website on November 1 2021. Subscribers to the DT Hub will be notified when available.