Using components of the so-called FIWARE framework, a reusable, standards-based data and communication infrastructure (DCI) for digital twins has been developed in ZwillE that combines hydrological and meteorological measurement and sensor data as well as simulation results from various distributed sources in a unified technical environment.
In order to enable the integration of data from various sources (meteorological and hydrological measurement and sensor data, actuator status data, simulation and forecast data, etc.) into a digital twin and to simplify the exchange of this data between the various technical sub-components of the digital twin (simulation core, decision support component, visualization tool, etc.), a reusable data and communication infrastructure (DCI) based on standards was developed in the ZwillE joint project.
For integrating the various data types and sources, components of the FIWARE framework are used. FIWARE provides an open construction kit of open-source software and platform components to efficiently develop distributed smart applications for various application contexts. A central part of the technical realization of the DCI is the development of an additional technical component for the configuration and management of data communication with the so-called FIWARE Orion-LD Context Broker. This component simplifies the connection of external data sources, for example via gateways from measurement technology manufacturers, to the DCI and supports a variety of interfaces (file, HTTP(S), SFTP, REST, MQTT, CSV) as well as various database formats. This allows existing data silos to be broken down and meteorological and hydrological measurement data from different, distributed technical systems and platforms to be automatically merged into a standardized technical structure.
In addition to the ZwillE application context of developing a digital twin of an urban drainage infrastructure, the developed DCI can also be adapted for other smart city use cases with moderate adaptation effort.
