Promoting Observability in Digital Twin Reporting: A Hands-On Tutorial for DTInsight

Authors: Kérian Fiter, Bentley Oakes

Event: https://conf.researchr.org/details/models-2026/models-2026-tutorials/2/Promoting-Observability-in-Digital-Twin-Reporting-A-Hands-On-Tutorial-for-DTInsight

Tutorial slides and instructions: Google Slides

Code: https://github.com/oakeslabmtl/DTInsight

Abstract: Digital Twins (DTs) are evolving, complex software systems that require continuous stakeholder engagement throughout their engineering lifecycle. Yet, systematic and up-to-date reporting of DT characteristics and architecture remains challenging in practice.

This tutorial introduces DTInsight: an open-source tool and methodology for producing explicit, interactive, and continuous reports for DTs. In 150 minutes, participants will learn to (1) model a DT using the 21 characteristics of the DT Description Framework (DTDF) ontology in the Ontology Modeling Language (OML) with Luxor in Visual Studio Code; (2) generate and explore an interactive “DT constellation” visualization reflecting the data flow between physical and digital twin components; and (3) integrate this reporting into a CI/CD pipeline so that the report page is automatically regenerated on every commit.

We also discuss how local LLM-assisted ontology generation with reasoner corrections can accelerate the initial modeling step, lowering the barrier for practitioners new to ontology engineering. By the end of the session, attendees will have built and deployed their own DT reporting page for a provided case study. Thus, they will acquire practical skills in ontology-driven DT description and continuous software documentation directly applicable to real-world projects.