Opportunities for Visualising Complex Data by Integrating Virtual Reality and Digital Twins

A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical system and reflects selected aspects of the reality of the physical system in a digital environment. Digital twins are typically used to support data led decision-making. The digital twins of complex systems collect a large amount and variety of data from the physical system, which presents the challenge of integrating and visualising the data to understand the physical twin's own actions and its interactions with its environment. Virtual reality (VR) is visualisation technology that has become more easily available over the past few years. VR places the user in a 3-D visual environment which, using the proper equipment, they can interact with and manipulate items. This paper shows that the integration of digital twins with VR offers opportunities such as improved data navigation, data interpretation, collaboration during data interpretation and, thereby, decision making. The paper also explores the challenges that integration brings, including avoiding potentially overwhelming the user with data, navigating through the data, lack of industry experience and potential negative effects on users' wellbeing. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research into the integration of virtual reality and digital twins.