Towards a Taxonomy of Digital Twin Evolution for Technical Sustainability

The next generation of engineered systems ought to be more sustainable. In this context, Digital Twins play a crucial role as key enablers of sustainability ambitions in systems engineering. However, as a specific class of engineered systems, Digital Twins themselves must adopt sustainability principles to avoid defeating their purpose in fostering sustainability. In this proposal, we focus on the technical sustainability of Digital Twins, enabled by their evolution. We propose an initial taxonomy we believe will support systematic Digital Twin evolution mechanisms and draw links to similar taxonomies of Physical Twins.