Risk Twin: Real-time Risk Visualization and Control for Structural Systems

Digital twinning in structural engineering is a rapidly evolving technology that aims to eliminate the gap between physical systems and their digital models through real-time sensing, visualization, and control techniques. Although digital twins can offer dynamic insights into physical systems, their accuracy is inevitably compromised by uncertainties in sensing, modeling, simulation, and controlling. This paper proposes a specialized digital twin formulation, named Risk Twin, designed for real-time risk visualization and risk-informed control of structural systems. Integrating structural reliability and Bayesian inference methods with digital twining techniques, Risk Twin can analyze and visualize the reliability indices for structural components in real-time. To facilitate real-time inference and reliability updating, a "simulation-free" scheme is proposed, leveraging precomputed quantities prepared during an offline phase for rapid inference in the online phase. Proof-of-concept numerical and real-world Risk Twins are constructed to showcase the proposed concepts.