Methods and Applications for Modeling and Simulation of Complex Systems: 19th Asia Simulation Conference, AsiaSim 2019, Singapore, October 30 – November 1, 2019, Proceedings

A digital twin of a cyber-physical system is a simulation whose execution mimics the behavior of both the physical and cyber components of the system. While the idea of co-joining or federating simulations has been considered for quite a long time, the rise in interest of cyber-physical systems, coupled with increased computational power has brought the idea to the forefront under the labeling of ‘digital twin’. Uses include exploration of how cyber malfeasance might negatively impact the physical system, how the physical system may react to unusual inputs or boundary conditions, whether a particular control applied to the system will push it into a region of unsafe behavior. Fidelity of digital twins is clearly a desirable attribute, as is repeatability. In the former case we want confidence that the digital twin faithfully (enough) captures the behavior of interest, in the latter case we need to be able to understand, by replying the simulation, how a particular behavior observed in the simulation came to occur. This talk focuses on the challenges of repeatability and fidelity in a cyber-physical digital twin, when that twin combines classical simulation with emulation of executing software.