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Glossary
Operations and asset management

What is Digital twin?

Definition

A digital twin is a live model of a physical system, such as a water network, electrical distribution or a single HVAC unit, kept current by meters, sensors and controllers rather than drawn once.

Where twins earn their keep

Twins matter most where many systems interact and operators need to locate a problem, not just notice it: airports, hospitals, campuses, stadiums, data centers, manufacturing plants and water networks. Operations engineers, energy managers and controls teams are the main users.

Twin, BIM and dashboard compared

BIM records how a building was designed and built. A dashboard plots readings. A twin adds the relationships between assets, so it can show that flows or loads do not balance and point to where the gap sits. It also has to handle missing data openly, because a model that silently repeats the last good value misleads the people acting on it.

Aqueduct's three twins

Aqueduct builds each twin block by block to match the installation. The water twin refreshes every 60 seconds and solves Main Supply = All Floors + Fire System + RO Feed + Unaccounted Loss, alongside RO recovery and STP efficiency. The electrical twin balances grid, solar and backup generation against building loads and colors each feeder by power factor and loading. The RTU twin shows component states and accepts commands where control is enabled, with owner approval.

Questions

Digital twin: common questions

A digital twin in buildings is a model that mirrors how a real system is connected and behaves, refreshed by live data. It lets operators see flows, loads and equipment states in context and test whether the numbers add up. Aqueduct's approach is on the digital twin feature page.

No. A schematic or single line diagram fed by live data is a twin. 3D views help people orient themselves in a large site, but the value comes from the relationships between assets and the live balance between what goes in and what comes out.

A digital twin should say so. In Aqueduct a block whose meter is silent shows NO DATA rather than an old reading, and the device Health tab shows connection rate, so operators know which numbers to trust and which sensor needs attention.

A BMS graphic shows points from one control system, usually for one building. A digital twin combines meters, sensors and controllers from many systems and checks how they relate, for example whether water supply equals the sum of all uses, which a BMS graphic cannot do.

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