Value of systems of systems approach with Digital Twins

Digital Twin Consortium (DTC) announced a new white paper, “The Value of a Systems of Systems Approach with Digital Twins: A Case Study of Airport Passenger Boarding Bridges.”

The paper presents a practical blueprint for airport operators to enhance gate reliability, reduce emissions, and advance their ESG targets—utilizing a structured seven-step development framework grounded in the OMG Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) and DTC’s Capabilities Periodic Table (CPT).

The paper demonstrates how a System of Systems (SoS) approach—integrating operational and engineering capabilities across airside, landside, and terminal services—can deliver measurable improvements in gate performance, safety, energy efficiency, and turnaround orchestration.

“Passenger Boarding Bridges sit at the nexus of operations, safety, and sustainability,” said Dan Isaacs, GM and CTO, Digital Twin Consortium. “With a Digital Twin-enabled Systems of Systems approach, airports can synchronize people, processes, and equipment to reduce delays, cut energy waste, and unlock data-driven decision-making across the gate ecosystem.”

What’s inside the White Paper?
* A seven-step Digital Twin development process from problem definition and stakeholder mapping to modeling, optimization, and live monitoring.
* Alignment of business and technical layers using OMG’s UAF to connect strategic drivers and operational capabilities with architecture artifacts.
* Mapping of operational capabilities to Digital Twin capabilities via DTC’s Capabilities Periodic Table (CPT)—enabling traceability, gap analysis, and maturity planning.
* Airport case study: Passenger Boarding Bridges (PBBs)—detailing issues such as misalignment, component failures, poor energy integration, and how Digital Twins can intervene.
* Operational scenarios (e.g., service delays, gate conflicts, weather impacts, APU/GPU utilization) to validate improvements and establish optimization loops.
* Future directions, including a DTC testbed proposal to evaluate interoperability, AI-assisted capability composition, and closed-loop optimization.

“This blueprint closes the gap between airport executives’ sustainability goals and the engineering specifications needed to achieve them,” said a Dassault Systèmes executive. “By connecting UAF views with CPT capabilities, teams can design from outcomes backward to systems—and forward to services, resources, and controls.”