Digital Twin: from theory to practice

Supports: 

• IFAC Technical Committee 5.3 on "Enterprise Integration and Interoperability of Enterprise Systems"
• IFAC Technical Committee 9.3 on "Control for Smart Cities"
• Digital Twin Consortium
• Orisun

Digital Twin has been introduced over a decade ago, as an innovative all-encompassing tool, with perceived benefits including real-time monitoring, emulation, and forecasting. However, digital twins' theoretical framework and practical implementations (DT) are still far from this vision. Although successful implementations exist, sufficient implementation details are not publicly available. It is difficult to assess their effectiveness, draw comparisons and jointly experiment the DT methodology for specific operating fields. This open track explores the various DT features and current approaches, the shortcomings, opportunities for sustainability, and the reasons behind the delay in implementing and adopting the digital twin. Advancements in machine learning, the internet of things, and big data have contributed hugely to the improvements in DT regarding its real-time monitoring and forecasting properties. Despite this progress and individual company-based efforts, specific research gaps exist in the field, which have caused delay in the widespread adoption of this concept. This open-track session of the ICIST 2022 conference aims to bring together leading experts on Digital Twin theory, applications, and modelling to present the latest advances and results in their specific research domains.

This track welcomes research in this field, especially in the (but not limited to) following topics:

• Simulation/Emulation models for Digital Twins
• Tools and Applications of Digital Twin for Industry 4.0, e-health, smart cities, agriculture, manufacturing, aerospace, transport, … 
• Model-Based System Engineering of Digital Twin
• Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and deep learning techniques for Digital Twin
• Digital Twin models interoperability
• Knowledge extraction and modelling for Digital Twin
• Digital Twin for Cyber-Physical Systems
• Human Digital Twin
• Digital Twin for sustainable manufacturing

The track chairs invite scientists, engineers, and decision-makers from government, industry, and academia to contribute with theoretical and applied research papers.

Papers published in this track will be invited to be extended for a special issue of an international journal.

Co-chairs:

• Panetto, Hervé (herve.panetto@univ-lorraine.fr). Research Center for Automatic Control of Nancy (CRAN), Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France
• Dassisti, Michele (michele.dassisti@poliba.it). DMMM, Politecnico di Bari, Bari, Italy
• Semeraro, Concetta (csemeraro@sharjah.ac.ae). University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Blockchain Technologies and their applications

Blockchain Technology (BCT) has surpassed its initial application in cryptocurrencies, and now is being used in a wide array of areas. As blockchain creates resilient and tamper-proof distributed records, it has generated much interest in industry and academia alike. The innate properties of immutability and transparency are making BCT a disruptive technology, especially when it comes to applications in healthcare, supply chain management, financial and public sectors, and many others. In addition, BCT has an important role in decentralization in the fields of the Internet of Things, Cyber-Physical Systems, Fog/Edge Computing, next-gen wireless communications, as well as many more fields.

The goal of this special track is to promote community-wide discussion identifying the applications, technologies, as well as theories for BCT. Authors are encouraged to submit papers on topic relevant to this session that include, but are not limited to the following:

• Theories of blockchain and distributed ledger technology
• Protocols and algorithms based on BCT
• BCT in the Internet of Things (IoT)
• BCT in Healthcare
• BCT in Financial Tech
• BCT in Supply Chain Management
• BCT in Agriculture
• BCT in cloud/fog/edge computing
• BCT in Next-Gen communications and networks
• BCT in the Public Sector

Co-chairs:

• Zdravković, Nemanja (nemanja.zdravkovic@metropolitan.ac.rs). Faculty of Information Technology, Metropolitan University, Belgrade, Serbia

ICT for health, well-being and sport

One of the greatest social challenges today is addressing many different concerns and issues related to healthcare and well-being. These challenges include, but are not restricted to, improving the understanding of the causes and mechanisms connected to health; ability to monitor, prevent, detect, and treat disease; personalize health and care delivery. For addressing such challenges, a new approach is needed, which will transform the health and care delivery. This approach is proactive rather than reactive. Healthcare should evolve mechanisms for early risk detection, shifting from the acute treatment to long-term health monitoring. Instead of focusing on single disease treatment, healthcare systems should become capable of handling multiple chronic conditions and comorbidities at the same time. Care delivery should become pervasive, not exclusively institutional. Finally, the generic treatment approach should be abandoned, and care should become more personalized.

Although health is an important, if not necessary, component of well-being, physical activities such as recreation and sports are a good way to maintain and improve it. With the rapid advancement and affordability of miniature, wearable sensor devices, new approaches to quantifying and qualifying our physical activities are possible. For example, innovative applications based on sensor data will contribute to faster, cheaper and safer physical rehabilitation programs, personalized recreational plans, and in-depth analysis of athletes' performance in different sports.

Advanced ICT technologies will play a crucial role in this transformation. Health-related data will grow and will have accurate and useful digital representations. Predictive computing, used by the care providers and customers, will use health-related data to facilitate early risk detection and self-management of health and disease. Health systems will become interoperable. Robotic systems, driven by artificial intelligence will enable assisted living, in smart, age-friendly homes. Biofeedback applications in healthcare, sport, recreation, and rehabilitation will enable an easier and faster way to achieving the desired results. They will assist individuals, healthcare personnel, and trainers in many ways; from influencing the physiological processes in the human body, to motor learning in sports and rehabilitation.

With this session, we aim to uncover the current research in the above mentioned topics and topics closely related to them. All relevant contributions are strongly welcomed.

Co-chairs:

• Trajanović, Miroslav (traja@masfak.ni.ac.rs). Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Niš, Niš, Serbia
• Kos, Anton (anton.kos@fe.uni-lj.si). Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Canciglieri Jr., Osiris (osiris.canciglieri@pucpr.br). Pontifical Catholic University of Parana – PUCPR / PPGEPS, Curitiba, Brasil

ICT application in green energy

Switching to green energy and moving away from fossil fuels is one of the biggest topics facing the whole world. In that sense, various strategic activities have been launched at the level of countries, regions and state unite, as well as scientific projects in research and development institutions, all with the aim to enable the transition from fossil to renewable energy sources, leading the change towards optimal and energy efficient production, embedding planning of energy consumption and production, reduce negative impact on the environment, etc. It is especially important to investigate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, geothermal, wind, biomass and other sources from the aspect of sustainable development. 

Since many regions are facing similar problems in the transition period, it is important to exchange ideas, achievements and novel approaches such as the Green Agenda at EU level to make green transitions as fast and secure as possible.

Digital technologies, with their capabilities, should help speed up this transition process and enable solutions to be implemented in as much capacity as possible.

Topics that may be interesting are numerous, but we believe that the application of ICT in energy efficiency can be important as one of the first steps in saving energy. Also, the use of organic waste as an energy source by applying GIS, waste source mapping, application of image processing for recognition of organic waste sources, have the potential to support the green transition. The application of ICT in energy planning is inevitable for monitoring and energy management. Finally, creating conditions for the implementation of smart grids, can be considered a final step, placing the abovementioned and other applications in use, thus enabling the green transition on a large scale.

Co-chairs:

• Stefanović, Gordana (goca@masfak.ni.ac.rs). Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Niš, Niš, Serbia
• Duić, Neven (neven.duic@fsb.hr). University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Zagreb, Croatia
• Dimitrovski, Dame (dame.dimitrovski@mf.edu.mk). Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, North Macedonia