5th International Workshop on Architecting and Engineering Digital Twins (AEDT)

Co-located with the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) 2026, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The AEDT workshop addresses the role of software architecture in designing, modeling and maintaining Digital Twins (DTs) as well as the role of DTs alongside architecting activities like design, modeling, communication, and negotiations, and the resulting artifacts like blueprints, models, design decisions, documentation, and implemented solutions. The IEC/ISO Joint Technical Committee has identified DTs as a priority emerging technology and a key driver of digital innovation, with the market projected to reach $137.67 billion by 2030. Therefore, considering the increasing market motion towards the adoption of DTs, more research is needed to bridge the gap between system and software architecture, modeling for DTs and the physical world, as identified in several domains like agriculture, health, automotive, industrial production, among others. This includes system and simulation modeling that allows proper visualization and simulation of the systems to be developed early in the design phase, but also the integration of data collected during operation of the systems already developed back into the models used during design, thus supporting continuous engineering practices.

In addition, future software and complex systems will increasingly require adaptive architectures and models that continuously adjust their behavior at runtime. For example, in the Industry 4.0 domain, the term cognitive DT has been coined to categorize DTs that receive sensor data, reason about this data, and make decisions using AI technologies. Moreover, in safety-critical domains, there is a strong need to ensure that these autonomous decisions based on AI techniques such as neural networks do not lead to safety incidents.

In summary, DTs as software artifacts, or as components of other software artifacts, or even as systems in software system-of-systems connected to long-lived cyber-physical devices, systems, or system-of-systems, raise numerous open research questions that need to be addressed from a software architecture and modeling perspective for engineering the next generation of cyber-physical systems and system-of-systems.


Topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Design and architecture of collaboration platforms to enable the joint engineering and maintenance of cyber-physical asset virtual replicas
  • Architectural integration of system modeling, AI, and simulation as fundamental DT building blocks
  • Model-based life cycle management and maintenance of DTs in symbiosis with their cyber-physical assets
  • Continuous quality assurance for cyber-physical assets and their architectures through DT monitoring, testing, and control
  • The conceptual and architectural modeling of socio-techno-economic characteristics of large business and societal systems, including uncertainty, dynamism, and emergentism in space and time
  • The use of DTs in the description and evaluation of systems and software architectures, in particular how to architect with DTs and how to architect DTs
  • Investigate the interplay of AI and DTs, i.e., utilizing AI for enhanced DT capabilities through, e.g., surrogate modeling, but also leveraging DTs as advanced and adaptive environments for AI training and validation
  • Innovative solutions for describing (and possibly generating from models), maintaining, and co-evolving DT and physical twin architectures, as well as cyber-physical architectures that include DTs
  • Industrial practices related to both reference and concrete modeling of architectures for DTs and with DTs, e.g., in manufacturing, automotive, construction, healthcare in the context of Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0
  • The relationship between DT modeling, architectures and continuous engineering practices.
  • Understanding the role of DTs as enablers of autonomous systems
  • Epistemology of DTs, aiming at properly characterize DTs to understand what differentiates them from traditional executable models

Submission Guidelines

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. They will be evaluated based on originality, contribution to the field, technical and presentation quality, and relevance to the workshop.

Please consider the following formats:

  • Full research papers (8 pages including references), describing a novel idea or approach about software architecture techniques and solutions for or with digital twins
  • Short position papers (4 pages including references), describing promising research actions not fully validated
  • Industry papers as case studies (6 pages including references) about software architecture solutions for or with digital twins partially or fully validated in a real industry setting, respectively lessons learned from industry
  • Industrial talk submissions: Besides the deadlines for peer-reviewed submissions, the workshop will accept industry talk submissions. Their selection will be managed directly by the workshop chairs. Please note that industry talk submissions will not be included in the proceedings

Important Dates


Keynote Speakers

TBA


Schedule

TBA


Track Chairs

  • Ass.-Prof. Philipp Zech, Department of Computer Science, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
  • Dr. Pablo Oliveira Antonino, Frauenhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany
  • Dr. Souvik Barat, TCS Research, Pune, India
  • Vinay Kulkarni, TCS Research, Pune, India
  • Prof. Dr. Bedir Tekinerdogan, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Program Committee

  • Georg Fröch (University of Innsbruck, Austria)
  • Alexandra Jäger (University of Innsbruck, Austria
  • Simon Kranzer (FH Salzburg, Austria)
  • Aditya Paranjape (TCS Research, India)
  • Clemens Sauerwein (University of Innsbruck, Austria)
  • Enis Kararslan (Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Muğla, Türkiye)
  • Mark van-den-Brand (Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands)
  • Frank Schnicke (Fraunhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany)
  • Norha Villegas (ICESI University, Pance, Colombia)
  • Manuel Wimmer (Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria)
  • Andreas Wortmann (University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany)
  • Marco Jahn (Eclipse Foundation, Darmstadt, Germany)
  • Rafael Capilla (King Juan Carlos University, Madrid, Spain)
  • Elisa Nakagawa (University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil)
  • Thomas Kuhn (Fraunhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany)
  • Andreas Morgenstern (Mercedes-Benz AG, Stuttgart, Germany)
  • Loek Cleophas (Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands)
  • Ramona Trestian (Middlesex University, United Kingdom)
  • Huan Nguyen (Middlesex University, United Kingdom)
  • Massimo Tisi (IMT Atlantique, LS2N (UMR CNRS 6004), France)
  • Thais Batista (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)
  • Everton Cavalcante (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)
  • Bentley Oakes (Polytechnique Montréal, Canada)
  • João Luiz Rebelo Moreira (University of Twente, Enschde, Netherlands)