The Two Faces of Interoperability: Bridging Cyber and Physical Spaces with Digital Twins

The concept of Digital Twins has emerged as a pivotal innovation for bridging the physical and digital realms. This paper investigates the two-faceted nature of interoperability: on the physical side, Digital Twins must integrate with heterogeneous devices and data sources; on the digital side, applications may need to seamlessly interoperate with possibly heterogeneous Digital Twins. We propose a software architecture that addresses this dual interoperability requirement, discuss its alignment with existing standards and showcase it in an industrial use case.