Digital Twin as a Decision-Making Aid in the Face of Uncertainty

You have heard extensively about digital twins and how they can be applied in a range of domains and for a range of different purposes. A particularly pressing problem that you are wrestling with is understanding how digital twin technology can be applied to aid in your decision-making requirements in the context of uncertainty. Do you need help in understanding how digital twins can be used? This introductory tutorial provides you with a detailed understanding of why digital twins are an important technology for exploring the unique phenomena of complex socio-cyber-economic ecosystems. The tutorial presents a critical analysis of the current state of the art and practice of digital twins in decision making and includes a focus on our actor-based language called Enterprise Simulation Language (ESL). This language is an example of an infrastructure for developing these digital twins for complex systems decision making. The tutorial helps you understand how ESL and related technologies can be used effectively by presenting multiple examples of real-world use of ESL to build digital twins. Problems addressed by these examples include: COVID-19 intervention planning, return to work planning post COVID-19, customer lifetime value optimization in the telecoms industry, and supply chain.

Participants will get introduced to the concept of Digital Twin as it is seen in Business, Cyber-physical and Socio-techno-economic spaces. Participants will get exposed to the core technology infrastructure needed to support Digital Twin as a decision-making aid. They will learn how digital twin possibly accompanied by reinforcement learning has been used to support quantitative evidence-backed decision-making in several real-world use cases two of which resonate very well with the conference theme of “modelling for social good”.

Speaker/s Biography: Vinay Kulkarni is Distinguished Chief Scientist and Head of Software Systems & Services research at Tata Consultancy Services. His research interests include digital twins, adaptive enterprises, learning-native software systems, model-driven software engineering, and enterprise modelling. Alumnus of IIT Madras, Vinay serves as a Visiting Professor at Aston University Birmingham, Middlesex University London, and IIT Jodhpur. Further information can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/vinayvkulkarni. Vinay can be reached at vinay.vkulkarni@tcs.com.

Souvik Barat is a Principal Scientist at Tata Consultancy Services Research and visiting research at Middlesex University London. He holds a PhD Computer Science and his research interests include digital twin technology, modelling and simulation of complex systems, agent and actor technology, enterprise modeling, and business process modelling. His email address is souvik.barat@tcs.com.

Tony Clark is a Professor of Computer Science and Deputy Dean (Education) in the College of Engineering and Physical Science at Aston University. He has experience of working in both Academia and Industry on a range of software projects and consultancies. His research interests include Digital Twins and Software Engineering, Languages and Modelling for Agent-based Adaptive Systems. His email address is tony.clark@aston.ac.uk.

Balbir Barn is Professor of Software Engineering and Academic Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at Middlesex University. Balbir has extensive commercial research experience working in research centres at Texas Instruments and Sterling Software as well as leading on academic funded research (Over £2.5 million). His research interests include socio-technical digital twins, value sensitive design and model driven software engineering. His email address is b.barn@mdx.ac.uk.