Model-based digital twin engineering: insights, challenges, and future directions

Abstract Model-based engineering (MBE) is a powerful paradigm that leverages models as essential pillars of the development process, enabling teams to clarify requirements, streamline design, specify behavior, and perform rigorous verification and validation tasks across the entire system life cycle. Digital twins (DTs) represent revolutionary software systems that mirror cyber-physical, socio-economic, or biological entities, systems, or processes. Built from robust models and data, DTs are deployed for high-impact applications such as planning, monitoring, control, and optimization of the twinned entity. The model-centric nature of DTs has naturally ignited recent exploration into harnessing MBE for the engineering and operation of DTs. However, this organic evolution has created a fragmented landscape of (partial) solutions. To confront this challenge, this article presents a rigorous and systematic literature survey on the field of model-based DT engineering (MBDTE), accompanied by a novel taxonomy for categorizing MBDTE approaches. We also introduce crisp definitions of both the field of MBDTE and the models themselves. We conclude by highlighting research gaps and outlining avenues for further exploration.