How to characterize a Digital Twin: A Usage-Driven Classification

Last years, publications on the Digital Twin have been increasing sharply without any real coherence, representing very different realities. In order to clarify its scope, we propose not only a global definition, but also a complete, usage-driven classification methodology. This enables to integrate data and models as well as applications in a generic overview. Moreover, the usage-driven deployment of the Digital Twin allows to be user-centric, in order to foster acceptance. We give various examples of the interest of this classification to support the deployment of the Digital Twin in all industrial applications. Copyright (C) 2021 The Authors.