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May 2021
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Digital Twin Morphing to Triplets + New Wireless Wave
As we are all trying to get our minds around the concept of
creating and using a digital twin our Contributing Editor, Nicolas gives
birth to Triplets and suggests more variants are on the way
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Ken Sinclair
Founder, Owner, Publisher AutomatedBuildings.com
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Digital Twin Morphing to Triplets + New Wireless Wave
As we are all trying to get our minds around the concept of
creating and using a digital twin our Contributing Editor, Nicolas gives
birth to Triplets and suggests more variants are on the way. Also featured in our April issue themed Adaptation are several articles depicting the new wireless wave
which is now hitting us with low cost easily deployed services/devices
combining the power of cell like wireless and the powerful new breed
IoT services.
Hopefully, we prepared you in our last Chapter "Adaptation" LinkedIn post here.
In this article Nicolas makes some great points Is there a need for Digital Triplets? Quadruplets? Siblings even? How can we adapt to a world that was, that is, and will be? How can we adapt to a future that is unknown? Nicolas Waern "The Building Whisperer"
How can we adapt to a world that was, that is, and will be? How can we
adapt to a future that is unknown? Can we make it known by utilizing
the concept of Digital Twins, and go Beyond Buildings? Can we simulate
the future, having done thousands of AI-driven simulations, and bring
the solutions back to the now, knowing what the future will look like?
Knowing that the future is already
here, only unevenly distributed. I have made it my mission to find the
tools that can distribute the future to the ones that want it the most.
Digital Twins are quite in the hype for now so thought I could stir up
some noise even more with Digital Triplets.
What started off as a joke, soon
became reality in a couple of conversations with partners and vendors
last week. I talked to legends in the Power industry having written
articles about Triplets a year ago exactly. It came up in discussions
with industrial automation professionals regarding simulation
capabilities. I mentioned 6G, 7G, or 8G and Digital Triplets in a
webinar last week to make a point that we need to talk more about the
jobs to be done, instead of the buzzword bingo right now.
The need to adapt to existing ways of
working was also discussed in a webinar [i] for Chalmers University and
The Digital Twin City Centre, about Revenue Models and Business Models.
The importance of understanding the concept, the situation, and the
unique problems that should be solved cannot be emphasized enough,
where existing companies are indeed built to die[ii].
Finding inspiration is not the
challenge. That is just a google away. Finding what problems to solve,
and how to solve them in their unique setting with culture, processes,
people, existing systems, and political agendas can only be discovered
by digging into the reality that exists. It is known that Digital Twins
can accelerate digital transformation efforts. But a lot of the real
use cases are yet to be discovered at scale. But what are the
main parts that Digital Twins are made up of?
"The Digital twin is made up of three
parts: physical entities in the real world, virtual models of those
entities, and the data that connects the two worlds.
- CIO applications
Memoori asks Is the Path to the Digital Twin Future of Buildings Paved By APIs?
https://memoori.com/is-the-path-to-the-digital-twin-future-of-buildings-paved-by-apis/
A digital twin is a digital
representation of a real-world entity or system. In the context of a
building, digital twins express the location and characteristics of
every wall, door, and window, but also every pipe, cable, and switch in
a virtual model. In our increasingly smart buildings, digital twins
must also mirror every system, device, and connection to truly
represent the facility. Buildings are not static entities, however, so
to maintain an accurate digital twin the system must also monitor wear,
tear, and repair, and realize every modification or upgrade, in the
digital model. With many traditional assets and an estimated 1.7
billion connected sensors and endpoints in commercial buildings in
2020, the digital twin has its work cut out.
According to the
tech research firm Gartner, 75% of organizations implementing Internet
of Things (IoT) technologies already use some form of digital twin or
plan to within a year.
Quantum Digital Twins — from system topologies to AI This is part 2 of a 3 part series Troy Harvey, CEO PassiveLogic
The evolution of building and IoT
automation is placing a strain on the demands of installers, engineers,
and manufacturers of equipment. Growing customer requirements, and the
fast moving technology interplays between buildings, occupants, energy,
and the business processes within these structures, are adding to
already overburdened requirements on automation systems.
We as an industry need to come to
grips with the fact that building systems are the world’s most complex
automated systems. Once we do that, we can then address our systemic
problems. Even the smallest buildings easily have thousands of I/O
points — or what we’d call degrees of freedom in robotic analysis. In
large buildings the I/O points can exceed hundreds of thousands, and
with the growth of the IoT industry, the complexity is only growing.
Only once we give buildings their due respect against comparative
cyberphysical systems like autonomous vehicles, Mars rovers, or
industrial robotics, can we start the conversation on what we do to
address the complexity.
In addition to managing this rising
system complexity and evolving customer demand, there is exponential
growth in the diversity of applications and use cases We are exhausting
our tools with workarounds to solve this exploding complexity. We
are asked to model not only the HVAC systems, but the architectural and
engineering workflow. We need more than tags, more that labels, more
than interconnections. We need not only to describe hydronic and air
flows between mechanical equipment, but the data flow within and
between IT and IoT systems. We need to connect not only the building
systems to the structural elements, but also the interconnected
business systems within — whether that is the processes of occupants,
logistics, manufacturing, energy, or any of the myriad services we are
currently being asked to integrate with the building.
If you are starting to Adapt to Twin and Triplet thinking
keep your eyes open for the next big upsetting wave, the Wireless Wave
Washing over new IoT ways to every known enlisted building component
with its descriptions, purpose, address, dynamic location and sharable
data providing rapidly deployable adaptation with automatic network creation and self-discovery.
“The Only Constant is Change” Virtual reality is just not quite the same as the real deal, but in alignment with this month’s publication theme “Adaption”
Phillip Kopp, CEO Conectric Networks
Humans
are very good at adapting and that is likely an underlying reason for
our success as a species so far. But what about our assets? All of the
physical systems we have designed to help us in our quest to survive in
our dynamic Earth home and propagate out into the rest of the Universe.
In particular, those buildings we have developed in order to live in
all types of conditions and climates around the world (and space… in
the not-so-distant future). Arguably one of the oldest and most
important adaptation tools in our inventory. Are our buildings
adaptable to the constant change? What if the environment they were
built to endure changes around them? What if the end-use they were
designed for is no longer relevant? Just for example, all those giant
convention facilities and office buildings that have been empty for
over the last year. These are very important questions for the owners,
operators and users of those very costly assets.
......Let’s
look first into the structural component of how our buildings will need
to adopt to these new paradigms. It is not only possible, but necessary
to rethink how we design and build in the future to make our structures
more adaptable and resilient to changing conditions. However, the
reality is that our entire industry is not well suited to this kind of
sudden, major change either. This begs a kind of reengineering of the
entire industry stack. From how stakeholders like engineers,
architects, technicians, builders and consultants are trained and
deployed, to how buildings are financed and later operated. Building a
structure to meet a specific end use makes it inherently inflexible.
This can be closely tied to local zoning ordinances and master planning
that require certain types of structures to be built in certain areas.
The expected use of an asset over its life facilitates financing its
development. But what if needs change so dramatically that a once a
busy shopping mall dies, and must be repurposed as a corporate office
campus or a multi-family complex? With cities in drastic need to build
resilience to extreme weather and public health or safety crisis, it’s
very likely we will see a rethinking of these zoning systems in the
coming future to facilitate new kinds of multi-purpose buildings. And
with those buildings, a new kind of construction process which
de-emphasizes the importance of any particular stakeholder during early
construction and adds much more value in providing ongoing services to
these adaptable structures, which may be in constant change over their
entire useful life. This is a fundamental shift in the distribution of
resources across an entire industry, including how buildings will be
owned and operated.
In this interview with Don Kasper is VP of Strategy and Business Development at Sentient Buildings, a New York-based software company and master systems integrator.
Sinclair: You mentioned both adaptability and GEB buildings which caught my attention. Can you explain further?
Kasper: Our
vision is to be the data manager in buildings and act as a broker of
sorts to different systems. We can enable simple "If This, Then
That" controls in buildings by connecting all of the various
data-producing systems at the building level but also at the market
level so simple interactivity can be achieved without impacting the
existing controls a building. We've spent a lot of time thinking and
creating our Neuro platform to help future-proof buildings and make
them smarter. Another key feature of Neuro is that it has a simple but
complex user management system that allows us building owners to
provision access to data to any vendor or platform through our API.
This user management system means that a building owner can give access
to a specific device, type of data point, or any system or sub-system
in the building. As an example, sub-meter data can be shared with a
tenant billing company and chilled water data can be shared separately
with an energy services company without having to repeat the data
collection process. This makes buildings highly adaptable since there
is one source of data that can be provisioned at any level to 3rd party
companies. How this applies to GEB is that we can broker data between a
demand response company and allow them to increase thermostats by 2
degrees through fleet management in anticipation of a demand response
event.
In 2016 this was the first I heard of twin thinking and first met Kasper Software Platform for Automated Analysis & Man vs Machine (Learning)
This article suggests we give every asset an IP address Low-cost Asset Tracking Asset
tracking by providing a simple, low-cost SaaS service that allows
clients to locate their assets when they are needed through a simple
search interface. Jim Henry, Spotto - Investor / Business Development Manager
Real-Time Indoor Asset Tracking solution company.
Our goal is to make asset tracking
easy, cost effective, targeted and timely so that organisations can
find their assets when they need them. A key advantage of this simple
proposition is that organisations can reduce costs by avoiding
unnecessary duplication of assets, preventing assets being lost (for
instance by being left in the wrong place) and minimising workplace
conflict due to frustrations associated with the ‘disappearance’ of
shared assets.
In 2001 ripples of these waves were starting In this building automation column I wrote;
The
next phase of building automation technology will bring new life to
some traditional equipment. Likewise, it will usher in a rethinking of
what building HVAC systems do, and how they do it. These insights
from our building automation columnist can help you get a running start
on the new wave of controls.
Pros Of Controls Componentization
Here are some of the advantages created by the componentization trend:
- Overall lower cost because the controls
necessary for the safety and operation of HVAC subsystems will be
combined with the building-wide control devices.
- Shared
points for safety and operation will be available for building
performance monitoring, eliminating the duplication of these points.
(For example, the chilled-water supply and return temperatures on a
chiller).
- Shared input
information to component control will allow points to be added to the
overall system that would not normally be economical to include.
Example: power usage of a chiller. This information is necessary for
capacity control but could also turn the chiller into its own energy
meter.
- The ability to
add increased functionality for an extremely low cost is inherent in
component control. The custom-designed controller can have the DDC
hardware configuration closely matched to the actual requirements of
the HVAC subsystem.
- Closer
integration of control in the HVAC equipment can occur through sensors
that can be made an integral part of the device by imbedding them in
locations not available to field installations.
- Self-tuning
control algorithms will be more successful because timing and tuning
parameters can be set for the particular device. Time constants and
control characteristics are predictable within the actual device.
Factory performance simulation will provide proof of the actual ability
of the control to self-tune under any conditions.
- The
fact that this same component control will be used on all manufactured
devices will allow the manufacturer the time to closely match correct
control for his equipment.
- Self-diagnostics
will be very sophisticated and an integral part of each manufactured
device. Using appliance-type thinking and assembly line construction,
the component control will be a large part of the quality assurance
effort, providing its own device original and continuous performance
evaluation. The low cost to add the necessary sensing and functionality
to make sophisticated self-diagnostics is achievable and will become
the lowest cost of providing original and ongoing product quality
assurance.
- Increased HVAC product functionality will continue to grow as new control concepts are developed daily.
ControlTalk Now a Video Chat April 4 where we talk about our April issue and digital triplets “As
our mediums of communication evolve, the reach of our voice moves from
local, to national, to global, from workspace to everywhere. We need to
be the change, disconnecting from our learned perceptions — hone our
superpowers.” Adaptation" Ken Sinclair, editor/owner Automated
Buildings.
Good summary here Connected Complexity The Padi Platform:Open-Source Tools For Open Data Represented from https://harborresearch.com/connected-complexity/
We
are at the cusp of a “perfect storm” of smart systems innovations.
Multiple parallel technology developments, including data modeling and
machine learning, are accelerating and enabling more complex and
adaptive systems such as digital twins. Along with the value these
innovations bring, however, grows the complexity of connecting and
integrating machines, equipment and data in a meaningful context. A new
open-source software tool, Connection Profile, enables simple, durable
and context-sensitive integration between complex systems without any
wasteful custom development. It is a great leap forward to the original
vision of the internet as a single, seamlessly integrated cloud.
Digital Triplets? Quadruplets? Componetized Wireless? Adaptation is in your future.
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