Digital Twin Evolution for Sustainable Smart Ecosystems

Smart ecosystems are the drivers of modern society. They control critical infrastructures, ensuring their stable and sustainable operation. Smart ecosystems are governed by digital twins -- real-time virtual representations of physical infrastructure. To support the open-ended and reactive traits of smart ecosystems, digital twins need to be able to evolve in reaction to changing conditions. However, digital twin evolution is particularly challenging due to the intertwined nature of physical and software components. As a consequence, software practitioners find a substantial body of knowledge on software evolution hard to apply in digital twin evolution scenarios. In this article, we provide software practitioners with tangible leads toward understanding and managing the evolutionary concerns of digital twins. By that, we aim to bridge a significant gap in leveraging software engineering practices to develop robust smart ecosystems.