Supporting the Creation of Digital Twins for CESs

One important behavioral aspect of collaborative embedded systems (CESs) is their trustworthiness, which can be assessed at runtime by evaluating their software and system components virtually. The key idea behind trust evaluation at runtime is the assessment of system interactions and consideration of an extended set of actors that influence the dynamicity of these systems. In this sense, the behavior of collaborative embedded systems and collaborative system groups (CSGs) is part of a more complex behavior of digital ecosystems that form around the collaborating systems. One way of performing runtime virtual evaluation of such complex behavior is through the implementation of digital twins (DTs). DTs are executable models fed with real-time data that allow behavior to be observed and analyzed in concrete technical situations. The use of digital twins enables goals to be evaluated in holistic scenarios at three different levels: strategic level, tactical level, and operational level, as we present in this chapter.