Foundations for the Systematic Evolution of Digital Twins
The adoption of digital twins (DTs) is one of the most important developments in cyber-physical system (CPS) engineering. Digital twins are digital representations of physical systems that enable system data analysis, simulation and experimentation, predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and more through DT services. The characteristic feature of a DT system is the automated, bidirectional connection between the actual system (AS) and its digital representation.
Research Focus
This project addresses a critical challenge: the systematic evolution of digital twin systems. While current research primarily focuses on specific lifecycle phases, we aim to provide comprehensive support for the entire evolution of digital twin systems throughout their lifecycle.
Our research focuses on:
Evolutionary Aspects of DT Systems: Understanding how digital twins evolve over time and adapt to changing requirements and environments
MetaTwins: Operationalized workflows to address digital twin system (DTS) evolution
DT Systems Evolution Management: Developing methods and tools for managing the evolution of digital twin systems
Application and Automation: Creating practical solutions for automating evolution management processes
Project Team
Stefan Klikovits (Principal Investigator, JKU) - Extensive expertise in model-driven digital twin engineering, quality assurance, and testing of complex systems
Manuel Wimmer (Project Partner, JKU) - Over two decades of experience in modeling, metamodeling, and model transformations
Joachim Denil (Associate Professor, University of Antwerp) - Expertise in model validation, validity frames, and simulation workflows
Joost Mertens (Post-doctoral Researcher, University of Antwerp) - Focus on digital-twin co-evolution and continuous validation
Partners
Institute for Business Informatics – Software Engineering, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Cosys-Lab – Electronics-ICT, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Flanders Make, Belgium
Funding
This project is funded by the FWF-FWO WEAVE program, fostering international collaboration between Austria and Belgium. Our work contributes to advancing the state of the art in digital twin engineering, model-driven engineering, and cyber-physical systems.
Digital Twins (DTs) are a key technology for smart ecosystems to provide accurate digital representation of their constituents, e.g., smart buildings, farms, transportation, and citizens, as well as synchronisation between the digital and the real subject, and the exploration of what-if scenarios and tradeoff reasoning. To cope with emerging complex socio-technical ecosystems, we need to bring DTs together, which is a challenging endeavour. After giving a historical overview of system adaptation, we review the many enabling technologies that can help with DT integration. Using a smart city as an illuminating example to highlight scenarios that require integration of DTs, we discuss a model-based conceptual framework that identifies DT integration strategies and elaborate on nine key integration challenges that still need to be addressed. We call on the DT community to investigate these challenges.
@inproceedings{Combemale2025EDT,author={Combemale, Beno{\{i}}t and Kienzle, J{\"o}rg and Mussbacher, Gunter and Archambault, Pascal and Bruel, Jean-Michel and Burgue{\~n}o, Lola and Cheng, Betty H. C. and Cleophas, Loek and Engels, Gregor and Foures, Damien and Klikovits, Stefan and Kulkarni, Vinay and Michael, Judith and Mosser, S{\'e}bastien and Sahraoui, Houari and Syriani, Eugene and Wortmann, Andreas},title={{On the Challenges of Integrating Digital Twins}},booktitle={3rd International Conference on Engineering Digital Twins (EDTconf 2025)},year={2025},month=oct,doi={10.1109/MODELS-C68889.2025.00042}}
DarTwin made precise by SysML v2 – An Experiment
Øystein Haugen, Stefan Klikovits, Martin Arthur Andersen, Jonathan Beaulieu, Francis Bordeleau, and 2 more authors
In 13th System Analysis and Modeling Conference (SAM 2025), Oct 2025
The new SysML v2 adds mechanisms for the built-in specification of domain-specific concepts and language extensions. This feature promises to facilitate the creation of Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and interfacing with existing system descriptions and technical designs. In this paper, we review these features and evaluate SysML v2’s capabilities using concrete use cases. We develop DarTwin DSL, a DSL that formalises the existing DarTwin notation for Digital Twin (DT) evolution, through SysML v2, thereby supposedly enabling the wide application of DarTwin’s evolution templates using any SysML v2 tool. We demonstrate DarTwin DSL, but also point out limitations in the currently available tooling of SysML v2 in terms of graphical notation capabilities. This work contributes to the growing field of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) for DTs and combines it with the release of SysML v2, thus integrating a systematic approach with DT evolution management in systems engineering.
@inproceedings{Haugen2025SAM,author={Haugen, {\O}ystein and Klikovits, Stefan and Andersen, Martin Arthur and Beaulieu, Jonathan and Bordeleau, Francis and Denil, Joachim and Mertens, Joost},title={{DarTwin made precise by SysML v2 -- An Experiment}},booktitle={13th System Analysis and Modeling Conference (SAM 2025)},year={2025},month=oct,doi={10.1109/MODELS-C68889.2025.00051},}
Continuous Evolution of Digital Twins using the DarTwin Notation
Joost Mertens, Stefan Klikovits, Francis Bordeleau, Joachim Denil, and Øystein Haugen
@unpublished{Mertens2025SoSyM,author={Mertens, Joost and Klikovits, Stefan and Bordeleau, Francis and Denil, Joachim and Haugen, {\O}ystein},title={{Continuous Evolution of Digital Twins using the DarTwin Notation}},journal={Software and Systems Modeling},year={2025},month=oct,doi={10.1007/s10270-024-01216-7},note={Journal First presentation at MODELS 2025},publisher={Springer},}