Speaker: Jim Webber, Chief Scientist, Neo4j

1. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
1
Digital Twin for the Win!
Dr. Jim Webber
Chief Scientist, Neo4j

2. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Introduction
• Definition
• Origins
• Current State of the Art
• Implementation Quagmire
• Knowledge graphs for digital twin

3. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Definition
“A digital twin is a virtual representation that serves as the real-time digital
counterpart of a physical object or process.”
“Product drawings and engineering specifications progressed from
handmade drafting to computer aided drafting/computer aided design to
model-based systems engineering.”
-- Wikipedia

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Origins
• Term ‘Digital Twin’ coined by
Grieves (Michigan) in 2002,
popularized by Vickers (NASA)
2010
• But owes much to the decades of
modelling work in computer
science
• Modelling and HPC especially

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State of the Art
• Since 2010 we’ve seen Digital Twin crop
up again and again
◦ Large, complex software systems
◦ Power generation
◦ Transportation
◦ Pandemic response!
• But the state of the art is not great
◦ NASA is going to Mars two years early!
◦ But most folks struggle with
implementation complexity

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Implementation Quagmire
• HPC or relational databases were fine
for old school digital twin
• Jet turbines are complicated, but can be
held in a single CAD model
• We rapidly hit a wall trying to scale it up
for other use-cases

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Knowledge Graphs for Digital Twin
• Graphs are a data structure
well suited to mastering the
complexity of intricate, highly
connected domains
• They can also be processed
(computed, stored, queried)
efficiently on modern
hardware

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Example: MacGyver
• Digital twin is a knowledge
graph
◦ Servers, switches, containers,
racks, storage, etc
• Kept up to date by listening to
the network, monitoring
application and system metrics.
◦ Real time view of the world
• Also provides the ability to
reason about intentional
changes to parts of the system
– look out for ripple effects that
are not expected!

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Vertical Opportunities
• Asset tracking
• Building/engineering maintenance
• Real-time transport/cargo tracking
• Operations management
• Financial flows/compliance
• And many more…
McKinsey suggests
that by 2025 the
total potential
economic impact of
IoT technology will
be growing from
$3.9 trillion to $11.1
trillion a year.
Where does the
data go?
$11T

10. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
10
Thank you
Dr. Jim Webber
Chief Scientist, Neo4j