Integrating Heterogeneous Digital Twins in Federated Ecosystems
2026-06-22 • Software Engineering
Software EngineeringEmerging Technologies
AI summaryⓘ
The authors explain that Digital Twins are virtual models of real-world systems used for monitoring and decision-making. While single Digital Twins work well alone, having many different ones work together across systems is hard because they use different technologies. They propose a new tool called the Federation Node Manager to help connect these diverse Digital Twins so they can share information and work together smoothly. They tested their idea in a smart mobility scenario focused on emergency response, showing it can help Digital Twins coordinate better.
Digital TwinInteroperabilityFederated Digital Twin EcosystemModular IntegrationProtocol AdaptationSchema AdaptationSmart MobilityEmergency ResponseRuntime CoordinationState and Event Exchange
Authors
Christian Vergara-Marcillo, Rami Bahsoon, Nikos Tziritas, Wendy Yanez-Pazmino, Panagiotis Oikonomou, Georgios Theodoropoulos
Abstract
Digital Twins (DTs) are increasingly used to virtualise physical systems at different scales, enabling monitoring, simulation, and predictions to support decision-making. However, while individual DTs are effective in stand-alone settings, ecosystem-scale deployments require multiple autonomous and distributed DTs to cooperate across system boundaries despite differences in modelling approaches or software technologies, making interoperability and runtime coordination critical challenges. Although \textit{Federated Digital Twin Ecosystems} have emerged as a promising direction, existing research remains at the conceptual stage, offering high-level architectures while leaving the practical integration of heterogeneous DTs underexplored. This paper proposes the \textit{Federation Node Manager}, a modular integration mechanism that connects local DTs to a federated environment through controlled capability exposure, protocol and schema adaptation, and timely state and event exchange for coordinated operations. We present a conceptual design and a prototype implementation, and demonstrate their feasibility in the smart mobility domain for emergency response scenarios. The proposed mechanism serves as an enabling component within a broader service-oriented federated DT ecosystem.