Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jan 1;23(1):468.
doi: 10.3390/s23010468.

Establishing Reliable Research Data Management by Integrating Measurement Devices Utilizing Intelligent Digital Twins

Joel Lehmann  1 , Stefan Schorz  1 , Alessa Rache  1 , Tim Häußermann  1 , Matthias Rädle  1 , Julian Reichwald  1
Affiliations

Establishing Reliable Research Data Management by Integrating Measurement Devices Utilizing Intelligent Digital Twins

Joel Lehmann et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

One of the main topics within research activities is the management of research data. Large amounts of data acquired by heterogeneous scientific devices, sensor systems, measuring equipment, and experimental setups have to be processed and ideally be managed by Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data management approaches in order to preserve their intrinsic value to researchers throughout the entire data lifecycle. The symbiosis of heterogeneous measuring devices, FAIR principles, and digital twin technologies is considered to be ideally suited to realize the foundation of reliable, sustainable, and open research data management. This paper contributes a novel architectural approach for gathering and managing research data aligned with the FAIR principles. A reference implementation as well as a subsequent proof of concept is given, leveraging the utilization of digital twins to overcome common data management issues at equipment-intense research institutes. To facilitate implementation, a top-level knowledge graph has been developed to convey metadata from research devices along with the produced data. In addition, a reactive digital twin implementation of a specific measurement device was devised to facilitate reconfigurability and minimized design effort.

Keywords: FAIR; cyber–physical system; digital twin; knowledge graph; ontology; research 4.0; research data management; sensor data.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure A1
Figure A1
Eclipse Ditto Information Model.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Concept of Digital Twins According to Grieves.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Conceptual RDM Architecture.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Schematic Layout of the Physical Photometer System.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Implementation of the Conceptual RDM Architecture.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Top-level Knowledge Graph for Research Data Management.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Registration of a Digital Twin within the RDM Core Space.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Node-RED Dashboard—Query Functionality for Specification-Driven Device Recommendation.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Node-RED Dashboard—Result for Detailed Specification-Driven Device Recommendation.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Node-RED Dashboard—Visualization and GUI of the Photometer Digital Twin Recording an Actual Measurement of a skin-like liquid Suspension (adc#1) and Reference Ambient Interference Measurement (adc#2).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Raptis T.P., Passarella A., Conti M. Data Management in Industry 4.0: State of the Art and Open Challenges. IEEE Access. 2019;7:97052–97093. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2929296. - DOI
    1. Jones E., Kalantery N., Glover B. Research 4.0: Interim Report. 2019. [(accessed on 6 December 2022)]. Available online: https://apo.org.au/node/262636.
    1. Wilkinson M.D., Dumontier M., Aalbersberg I.J., Appleton G., Axton M., Baak A., Blomberg N., Boiten J.W., da Silva Santos L.B., Bourne P.E., et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci. Data. 2016;3:160018. doi: 10.1038/sdata.2016.18. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Mons B. Data Stewardship for Open Science: Implementing FAIR Principles. Chapman and Hall/CRC; New York, NY, USA: 2018. - DOI
    1. Diepenbroek M., Glöckner F.O., Grobe P., Güntsch A., Huber R., König-Ries B., Kostadinov I., Nieschulze J., Seeger B., Tolksdorf R., et al. Towards an integrated biodiversity and ecological research data management and archiving platform: The German federation for the curation of biological data (GFBio) In: Plödereder E., Grunske L., Schneider E., Ull D., editors. Proceedings of the Informatik 2014. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.; Bonn, Germany: 2014. pp. 1711–1721.

LinkOut - more resources