Digital twins, virtual replicas of complex engineering systems, provide powerful platforms for exploring what-if scenarios, thereby supporting improved decision-making for crisis management. We see dynamic digital twins as having a great potential value in addressing security challenges for soft targets but only if they can overcome significant hurdles in today’s digital twin work.
Hurdles include interoperability (lack of shared concepts to allow digital twins to be built efficiently from multi-sourced data and models), feasibility (lack of data showing that dynamic digital twins can monitor, control, and optimize building environments in real-time through data and feedback, both simulated and real), causality (lack of robust human-technology-environment system models), and scalability (lack of evidence suggesting dynamic digital twins can be built cost-effectively for a large number of soft targets).
We address these challenges and enhance the utility of digital twins with seven research tasks. Digital twins empower the Virtual Sentry framework in the following three ways: (1) layered security architectural design and simulation; (2) what-if scenarios and decision support; and (3) versatile solutions for the vast variety of soft targets and crowded places.