The Future of Digital Twin is Taking Off on Runway 18R

The future of digital twin technology is heading for the runway at one of the largest airports in the United States.

Willow earlier this month announced a partnership with Microsoft linking WillowTwin to the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, which will streamline sustainability reporting soon to be required from building owners by the SEC and enable real-time “action points” that can be deployed to reduce carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency.

But Willow has its eyes on a much bigger prize. The digital twin leader and the tech giant are working together on an AI-driven platform that integrates all building systems and data sources, writes “rules” for them and—ultimately—automates building management functions across a portfolio, assuming responsibilities including command, control and cybersecurity.

“Microsoft is focused on bridging the OT fabric—operational technology—and the IT fabric, worlds that are of necessity blending together with each other in deeper and deeper ways,” Bert Van Hoof, president and chief operating officer of Willow, told GlobeSt. “Willow is developing those capabilities and understanding how our clients use the other fabrics.”

Van Hoof confirmed that the partners are aiming for the “Holy Grail” of digital twin proptech—a fully integrated, open-source, plug-and-play platform with a three-dimensional, real-time aggregate view of portfolio data and an “intelligent rules engine” that merges operational technology with IT infrastructure in one “holistic” system that can think for itself.

The system is much closer to reality than you might think, and it’s already gearing up for a high-profile Beta test: Willow is deploying it to govern the maintenance and operations of the recently renovated Runway 18R/36L and Terminal D at Dallas-Fort Worth’s airport.

Van Hoof, who joined Willow in September after spending a decade working on the Internet of Things at Microsoft—most recently as a partner at Microsoft Azure IoT—told us the work on next-gen digital twin technology is a natural extension of the “rules engines” developed at Microsoft.

Willow is aggregating data, including detection and diagnostics from building management systems—it can run vendors’ data through its platform independent of them—as well as sensors, spatial and static data, weaving them into an advanced tool that takes hundreds of inputs and generates a series of “rules” governing equipment across a portfolio.

“These systems exist in isolation in the silent world, but now in the twin you can bring them together and create rich rules where you can use real-time occupancy data to control the system,” Van Hoof said, noting that Microsoft was able to produce 60 “rules” it applied to 220 of its buildings around the world, resulting in net cost savings estimated at 130%.

“What we’ve been able to do with the twin is a next-generation intelligent rules engine where we can take the intersection of data and have a rich understanding of the relationships between all the equipment in the context of space and the operational aspect,” he said.

With geometric and “behavioral” layers, WillowTwin is deploying what it calls an “open modeling language” to map the hierarchical relationships between building systems and equipment in a way that enables its AI-driven rules engine to draw “inferences” that give the platform the capability to shape rules that ultimately will govern the automation of building systems.

“We always saw digital twins as the next evolution of all of that where you can create digital representations of any structure that have the ability to track the past and predict the future, bringing together all of the latest breakthroughs and catalytic events into that environment,” Van Hoof told us.

“The purpose of the twin is to create a digital feedback loop for facility operators and for the people who service and maintain the facility,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s to get inside and drive the action, driving successful business outcomes in an increasingly automated way.”

According to the Willow president, its digital twin platform is being developed with open source technology, so no proprietary toes of vendor platforms will be stepped on during the holistic integration of proptech in the “Holy Grail” of twins.

“This is an open modeling language, and that’s a big step,” Van Hoof said.