Along with the evolution of the new technologies such as industrial internet of things (IIoT), big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), etc., the amalgamation between the cyber and physical worlds in the industrial field has become necessary to realize and achieve the smart factory and increase its productivity. The emergence of the Digital Twin (DT) concept as a technology that ties the physical and digital worlds has gained significant attention around the world during the last years. However, this concept is relatively new; the literature related to this concept is limited, and its application is still under development and requires further participation from both the industry and academia. This thesis project presented the main requirements and the steps for building a DT. Three research questions have been formulated and answered separately to fulfill the objective of this research study. The answer to the first two research questions was mainly based on surveying the scientific literature to explore this concept's background, main infrastructure, related technologies, its applications in the manufacturing domain, open issues, and some opportunities and challenges that hinder its implementation. Further, the answer to the last research question is represented in proposing a general methodology with some detailed steps for DT's building process and validating this methodology with an existing case study to show it works in practice. Further, several aspects needed for future work have also been addressed.

Den digitala tvillingen i fastighetsbranschen har ett stort användningsområde. Den kan avhjälpa arbeteinom exempelvis energioptimering och luftkvalitet samt användas som kommunikationskanal ochvisualisera resultat. Användaren söker ett resultat och den digitala tvillingen byggs utifrån dessakriterier. Detta betyder att tvillingen ser väldigt olika ut beroende på vad som förväntas av den. Denhjälper dels till med att sänka drift-, underhålls- och administrationskostnader men gör det ocksåenkelt för användaren att hämta en stor mängd information om fastigheten från ett ställe. Något somblir särskilt aktuellt i värderingsprocessen av fastigheten. Eftersom information annars måste hämtasfrån flera olika källor och sannolikheten för felaktiga värden blir stor. Syftet med studien är att skapa en djupare förståelse för hur den digitala tvillingen definieras inomfastighetsbranschen samt undersöka hur värderingsprocessen påverkas av fastighetens digitala tvilling.Frågeställningen besvaras med hjälp av intervjuer med människor som har kompetens i området.Definitionen av den digitala tvillingen skildras beroende på respondentens arbete men kopplingar kandras till delar som är av större eller mindre relevans. För tillfället används inte den digitala tvillingensom hjälpmedel i värderingsprocessen men har potential att i framtiden avhjälpainformationshantering och datainsamling. / The digital twin in the real estate industry has a wide range of applications. It can assist in areas suchas energy optimization and air quality, as well as serve as a communication channel and visualizeresults. The user seeks a result, and the digital twin is built based on these criteria. This means that thetwin can look different depending on what is expected from it. It helps reduce operational,maintenance, and administrative costs while also making it easy for the user to access a large amountof information about the property from one place. This becomes particularly relevant in the propertyvaluation process, as information would otherwise have to be gathered from multiple sources,increasing the likelihood of inaccuracies. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how the digital twin is defined in thereal estate industry and examine how the valuation process is influenced by the property's digital twin.The research question is answered through interviews with individuals who have expertise in the field.The definition of the digital twin varies depending on the respondent's work, but connections can bemade to aspects that are of greater or lesser relevance. Currently, the digital twin is not used as a toolin the valuation process but has the potential to assist in information management and data collectionin the future.

The municipalities' vision of using City Information Modeling (CIM) and Digital Twins (DT) inurban planning, requires prerequisites in place. A prerequisite is BIM, which together with GIS can create CIM.BIM implementation for a municipality involves major challenges and one such challenge is the lack of BIMmodels for existing buildings and infrastructure. However, this study is limited to planned development inconnection with land allocation. BIM implementation for the land allocation process within a medium-sizedSwedish municipality involves many involved actors and thus the need for a mobilization of the involved actorsfrom an ANT-inspired perspective. The purpose of this study is therefore to analyze how an actor network canbe mobilized to implement BIM in the land allocation process. A case study method has been chosen in thisthesis, considering that a well-defined case is identified, and the approach enables a variety of data collectionmethods that have been inspired by the autoethnographic approach because the researcher belongs to the focalactor in the process.

This thesis work investigates the possibilities and limitations of using digital twin technology to create virtual automation lines which can be used in education and research to conduct automation labs virtually. The PTC automation line at University West has been used as a case study in this thesis. The digital twin created in this work consists of three key parts: a virtual model of the automation line created in Visual Components Premium 4.2, system control (PLC-control program) created in TwinCat 3, and a Beckhoff ADS communication protocol that connects the virtual model with the PLC program. Using a virtual model of industrial-like lab equipment in place of a real system can bring several benefits. It can increase visibility and safety in the system. It can also increase the accessibility of the system. Conducting virtual labs and experiments can also help in reducing the total cost of the system. The virtual twin of the automation line built in this work can be used to help the users to conduct automation labs and experiments virtually and to test their PLC programs offline.

At Epiroc’s drill rigs a safe system is installed to make sure the vehicle is driven in a safe manner. In the development both machine tests and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests have been performed but when changes are made the firmware in the safe modules has to be updated. To speed up the process a digital twin would be beneficial. This enables testing of parameters and formulation of criteria detecting faults. The purpose of the work is to develop a digital twin for steering and braking safe functions and evaluate the performance using data from machines as well as data from a HIL-rig. Also, the impact of the hydraulic model used in the HIL-rig is investigated. When the model is built two test cases are used to investigate how well the model replicates the behaviour of the real system and how sensitive it is to what input data is used. The biggest difference in the data is the sampling time, machine logs have 80 ms interval while logs from the rig are logged every 5 ms. It is discovered that some of the fault detection functions work very well no matter what data is used while others must have the better resolution to be trusted. The complexity of the hydraulic model used impacts the pressures but seem to have little effect on which fault codes are activated. With this the main purpose is partly achieved and further investigation is needed before the model can be used for all fault codes.

In the era of Industry 4 and Digital Twin – DT- (integrating Audio-Video, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Haptics - from the Greek word Haptikos meaning "able to touch") and the Tactile Internet (TI), it becomes obvious that telecom stakeholders need different networks requirements to provision high quality services with respect to the new standards. In reality, this era is proposed as TI, and it will achieve a true paradigm shift from content delivery to skill-set delivery network types, thanks to recent technical breakthroughs. It will build a new internet structure with improved capabilities; but it will be difficult to meet the technical needs of the TI with current fourth generation (4G) mobile communication systems. As a result, 5G mobile communication systems will be used at the wireless edge and as a key enabler for TI due to its automated core network functionalities. Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, most daily activities such as employment, research, and education are now conducted online rather than in person. As a result, internet traffic has risen dramatically. Nowadays, Tactile Internet is in its infancy deployment phase worldwide. For this reason, and because of the growing need of its applications, the feasibility of these applications on the existing and deployed networks infrastructures, especially in the growing countries, is thought to be very hard, even quasi-impossible. Since 5G is not reaching yet its convergence stage (i.e. it is not deployed everywhere) and there is a huge stress on mobile communications given that the world is still facing the COVID-19 Pandemic, and since all the activities are taking place online, we propose design and implement a QoS framework to facilitate the feasibility and the applicability of the TI systems, where no 5G infrastructure is deployed. This framework will predict the most suitable network type to be deployed for certain given TI applications with certain given KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Also, this framework is scalable, in such it gives an idea of even the future Next Generation Mobile Networks types (NGMN, if necessary). “To deal” with TI applications, means “to deal” with Haptics added to Audio and Video streams. Therefore, performance evaluation for haptic networks is required. And since there are different types of haptic networks, so interoperability is needed. Consequently, a standardization form is necessary for that purpose, to annotate and describe the haptic network. The first idea that flashes in mind, is the use of Ontologies. In these latters, we can add intelligent rules to infer additional data and predict resource requirements in order to achieve better performance. Many works in the research rely on Artificial Intelligence approaches to tackle the above-mentioned standardization, but very few depend on ontologies, and without futuristic outcomes, especially for the optimization problem. We mean by optimization, the optimal types, methods and rules that are able to accommodate the applicability of the TI systems (here come the applications KPIs) in an acceptable environment or infrastructure (here come the networking KPIs), and even-more, to infer the most optimal network type. To help manufacturing companies take full advantage of the TI, we propose to develop new methods and tools (ontologies) to intelligently handle the TI, DT (Digital Twin) and IoT (Internet of Things) sensor data and process data at the edge of the network and deliver faster insights. The outcomes of these ontologies, have been validated through two conducted case studies, where we simulated, in the first, TI traffic over Wi-Fi, WiMAX and UMTS (3G) infrastructures; While in the second we used 4G (LTE-A), along with SDN (Software Defined Networking) integrated to MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) as networking backbone. The results, in terms of QoS KPIs performance evaluation, present high relevance to our proposed Ontology outcomes.

This study aims to create a design concept for a digital twin to understand how it could be used to increase the health adherence of users through risk communication. This was done while also looking at how such a system could counteract potential health anxiety. The massive digitization and available data has enabled better opportunities to accurately represent and affect a person’s health in the form of a digital twin. The primary way of conducting the study was by using the ’Design Thinking’ method which incorporates five steps: Empathizing with the users’ needs, defining the problems, ideating, creating prototypes, and finally testing these. A literature study, four user interviews as well as two interviews with healthcare professionals were conducted to get a better understanding of what problems needed to be solved. The findings from these together with a brainstorming session resulted in low fidelity (LoFi) and high fidelity (HiFi) versions of a mobile prototype. A single overview page of a desktop version for health professionals was also created. The mobile prototypes were user tested, and input was asked from stakeholders and healthcare professionals regarding the risk communication and visualization via walkthroughs of the prototypes. The usability results of the tests were positive with the HiFi version scoring 83.5 / 100 on the System Usability Scale which measures usability, and this score is deemed to be ’good’. The risk communication used received positive feedback, and the findings showed that a digital twin could potentially help with adherence and prevention by the use of summaries, visualization, as well as combining icons with the use of absolute risk and frequencies. To minimize the risk of health anxiety, a digital twin could reduce health information that is not very serious or important through a ”less-is-more” approach. Other effective means could be to show positive visualization and by being mindful of the ordering of risks and benefits, showing the user the positive aspects after the negative ones. Despite this, because of the lower sample size and hypothetical test scenario, further studies need to be conducted to verify the validity in more real-life scenarios. More isolated testing should be done to understand the effects better, both in terms of risk communication and usability. Additional things that could be beneficial to look at could be the implementation of gamification elements in the digital twin, further development of a desktop version for healthcare staff, as well as using more personalization options.

Klimatförändring ställer idag krav på högre energieffektivitet vilket lett till utbyggnaden av ett distribuerat energisystem. Samtidigt introduceras framväxande teknologier som digitala tvillingar till det nya energisystemet i hopp om att ytterligare effektivisera systemet. För att främja samarbete mellan industrin och akademin, och således stödja utvecklingen och implementeringen av digitala tvillingar, bör aktörernas syner sammanföras. Syftet med arbetet är därav att undersöka ifall det finns några likheter och skillnader mellan industri och akademi i hur de uppfattar användningsområdena och utmaningarna med digitala tvillingar av distribuerade energisystem. För att besvara forskningsfrågan utfördes inledningsvis en systematisk litteraturstudie. Studien utgör arbetets underlag för akademins uppfattning om digitala tvillingars användningsområden och utmaningar. Vidare utfördes fem intervjuer med olika industriaktörer med insikt i digitala tvillingar och distribuerade energisystem för att avgöra deras uppfattning om teknologin. Insikterna från litteraturstudien och intervjuerna ställdes sedan mot varandra för att identifiera eventuella likheter och skillnader. De användningsområden som identifierades av akademin och industrin var simulering, felidentifiering och prediktivt underhåll, visualisering och styrning, cybersäkerhet, optimering av kraftnätet samt prognostisering och estimering. Utmaningarna som identifierades av akademin var standardiserade ramverk för modellering och för datahantering, brist på passande sensorer, datalagringsmöjligheter, datorers beräkningskapacitet och cyberattacker. Industrin identifierade motstånd till ny teknologi, kompetensbrist, silotänk, teknologins värdeskapande, datahantering och cyberattacker som huvudutmaningarna med digitala tvillingar. Utifrån analysen har industrin och akademin en liknande uppfattning om digitala tvillingars användningsområden inom distribuerade energisystem men uppfattningen om utmaningarna med digitala tvillingar var, inom akademin, mer teknikbaserad medan den inom industrin var främst icketeknisk. / Today, the increasing threat of climate change has created a greater need for higher energy efficiency, which has led to the development of a distributed energy system. At the same time, emerging technologies such as digital twins are being introduced into the new energy system in the hope of further improving the efficiency of the system. To promote cooperation between industry and academia, and thus support the development and implementation of digital twins, the views of the actors should be brought together. The purpose of this work is therefore to investigate whether there are any similarities and differences between industry and academia in how they perceive the applications and challenges of digital twins of distributed energy systems.  To answer the research question, a systematic literature study was initially conducted. The study constitutes the basis for the academia's perception of the use cases and challenges of digital twins. Furthermore, five interviews were conducted with different industrial actors with insight into digital twins and distributed energy systems to determine their perception of the technology. The insights from the literature study and interviews were then compared to identify any similarities and differences.  The application areas identified by academia and industry were simulation, fault identification and predictive maintenance, visualization and control, cyber security, grid optimization, and forecasting and estimation.  The challenges identified by academia were standardized modelling and data management frameworks, lack of suitable sensors, data storage capabilities, computational capacity of computers and cyber-attacks. Industry identified resistance to new technologies, skills shortages, silo thinking, technology value creation, data management and cyber-attacks as the main challenges of digital twins. Based on the analysis, industry and academia have a similar perception of the use cases of digital twins of distributed energy systems but the perception of the challenges of digital twins was, in academia, more technology-based while in industry it was mainly non-technical.

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