Concurrent Technical Session 6C-1: Data at the Helm – Unlocking the Potential of Digital Ship Data 
Colin Power & Carlos Sanyer

Digital twins hold significant promise for enhancing ship efficiency, maintenance, and lifecycle management. However, the rush to adopt this technology often overlooks the critical groundwork of data management and readiness. This presentation challenges conventional thinking about digital twin development by shifting the focus from the application and enabling technologies to the importance of managing ship data from its inception. Through real-world examples, we will examine how digital twin initiatives have encountered challenges, often due to early missteps in data management. A multidimensional approach to creating and maintaining the digital thread will be introduced, underscoring the need to establish this framework early in the process. This approach not only highlights the technological advantages of digital twins but also emphasizes how reevaluating procurement practices and addressing biases in data management can drive the development of digital twins toward greater sustainability, efficiency, and ship longevity.

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Concurrent Technical Session 6C-2: Digital Transformation with Digital Twin Technology: Real-World Applications for the Marine Industry
Dumindra Jayasinghe

This presentation will focus on Imagine 4D’s core technology, the Digital Twin Framework (DTF) software suite and digital twin use cases within the marine and other industries. A digital twin, a virtual replica of a real-world asset developed using I4D’s Digital Twin Framework, leverages the engineering data used to build the real-world asset, with metadata and interactivity, and capability to receive inputs and send outputs to external systems and existing enterprise applications. The DTF is designed to create, connect, interact with, deploy, visualize and manage digital twin applications supporting enterprise digital transformation across engineering, operations, maintenance, and training workflows.
The presentation will provide a high-level description of the Digital Twin Framework’s three segments: (i) suite for data ingestion and digital twin 3D model creation, (ii) development environment for digital twin application authoring and (iii) configuration manager for display medium and network compatibility management.
Through case studies of digital twin applications built to support the marine industry, the presentation will demonstrate the practicality and gains in operational efficiency of integrating digital twins within industry workflows. The first use case, the In-Service Support Application for a naval platform, demonstrates the capability to integrate a vessel digital twin with the SAP based DRMIS database, augmenting defect and engineering change management, along with a variety of embedded tools and functionalities, accessed from a single-pane-of-glass application. This use-case illustrates how intelligent software applications can improve enterprise workflows in work planning, scheduling and execution.
The second use case focuses on a digital twin application connected to a vessel simulation model and a Platform Management System. This application enables the real ship’s operational data to be connected to the digital twin for operational data analysis using an anomaly detection AI module as well as performance verification using a simulation model. The Platform Management System’s real-time data connection and the simulation data streaming capability integrated to the virtual 3D vessel renders this application a true virtual “ship zero”, perfectly suited to mirror the real ship’s operational status and become a platform to support and improve fleet readiness, engineering operations, configuration and software upgrade testing, reduce system upgrade and testing costs, and training, to name a few areas, without the need of all of the ship’s physical systems of components.
The third use case, within the nuclear industry, presents a deployed digital twin application that addresses a power-plant’s operations and personnel training, for over 900 users. This application includes elements such as a real-time data connection to the plant’s PI Server, multi-user immersive training capability featuring real-time data connection to the main control room simulator, a radiation propagation model, to name a few. This use case has already proven to increase worker readiness and bring about large-scale cost savings in plant operations.
In conclusion, the success of these real-world implementations demonstrates the versatility of Imagine 4D’s Digital Twin Framework and the key impact of digital twins empowering teams and enhancing operational efficiencies.