Imagine if there was a technology that gave you the ability to build a digital version of yourself so that with this version you could learn from past mistakes, find out what is happening to your body in the present, try to fix or avoid future health risks, predict their occurrence or even test a new drug and see its effect on your health before you take it?
Of course, you think that this scenario is fictional coming from a science fiction movie, or you may think that it is a realistic idea, but it is still trapped in laboratories and research, and we need years to reach this technology!
The truth is that this technology exists, is used, and you see it on a daily basis. Every Tesla car that walks on the street has a digital copy that sends information to it so that the engineering team can know what is happening with the real car at the same time.
This technology is called “Digital Twin“, and it is the technology that helped the US Space Agency (NASA) avoid the “Apollo 13” disaster.
The explosion of the oxygen tanks on the Apollo 13 spacecraft, which was launched in April 1970, would have caused a catastrophe, had NASA not established a similar twin for this vehicle at the Earth Station, allowing engineers to test the best possible solutions while they are more than 300 meters away. thousand kilometers from the spacecraft.
This can be considered an early application of the concept of twinning, although it was not digital at the time, and the lessons learned from this event led to the idea of creating a high-resolution digital version of spacecraft, to facilitate troubleshooting.
How did the digital twin become a reality?
This technology owes credit to several other technologies that helped its emergence, including artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, building information modeling, machine learning, and big data, in addition to an important factor, which is the cheap price of sensors in the recent period.
These technologies are what made it possible to monitor the movements of real objects and transfer them to a center that analyzes them and links the information with algorithms to learn from the past and predict the future.
Thus, this technology has become a magical crystal that can know everything related to the real version of things.
How did this technology reach the 2022 World Cup?
There, in the Aspire Sports City in the Qatari capital, Doha, and a few meters away from Khalifa International Stadium; Here is the Aspire Command and Control Center, known as ACCC.
The Director of the Command and Control Department, Hamad Ahmed Al-Muhannadi, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, “The main goal of establishing the center is to raise the efficiency of the operational environment for the World Cup stadiums, and to improve these operations.”
“It also aims to reduce the number of human cadres, and the center’s operations focus on facility management operations, security and safety, technology, and information security,” al-Mohannadi added.
Al-Mohannadi continues that the idea came after Qatar hosted the 2006 Asian Games, as the ambition became for Qatar to overcome all the obstacles that prevent it from organizing international sporting events, and to reach this goal, the state had to use all the technology available to it.
Al-Mohannadi adds that the process of electronic connection to the World Cup stadiums in Qatar is the first of its kind in the world, as there is no such connection at this level in any other stadiums in the world.
Monitor, control and intervene
“The real stadium as a building consists of several elements, whether the elements included in the building or even the equipment, devices, and fixtures in it,” Nias Abdel Rahman, CEO of Information Technology at Aspire, told Al Jazeera Net.
He added, “We, at the Control and Control Center in Doha, have created a copy of this stadium with all its details in the real version in the digital world, so that it is a digital twin of the real stadium.”
And Abdul Rahman continued, “Linking the real stadium with the digital twin located here in the control center gave us the ability to monitor, control, know, and even intervene, if necessary, in everything that happens in the real stadium from a distance.”
“For example, from here we can see any place, even areas that may be hidden or small in Ahmed bin Ali Stadium, which is one of the most modern smart stadiums in the world,” he explains.
Abdul Rahman said, “The alarm systems associated with the building, which transmit information to the digital twin, can tell us, for example, that there is an event in a specific place, and through the digital twin, we can directly determine the exact location of the event, not only that, but the digital twin can transport us there.” By transmitting the image directly from the scene of the event, this process of determining the severity of the event is known by means of the digital twin within seconds.
Abd al-Rahman continues, “What makes the digital twin, not just a three-dimensional image of the original version to monitor interactions only, or a tool that interacts with the events that take place in the real version; is the artificial intelligence and learning technology behind the three-dimensional image, which after identifying the event and based on experiences.” precedent by assessing its level of danger and launching a series of measures adopted by us in such cases.”
“For example, the system automatically, in the event of a fire in a specific area, closes the doors leading to the area after making sure that it is empty of people, launches the alarm system, and sends specific messages to the concerned authorities, whether the safety teams in the stadium or the external teams of ambulance or protection forces.”
These actions take place from the command and control center and from tens of kilometers away from some stadiums, and it is possible to predict through the digital twin that there is a need for maintenance in some stadium facilities before anyone notices it, for example, the digital twin recognizes cases such as opening water taps and leaving them open, and can close them from the control center.
Hamad Al-Muhannadi gave an example of a similar incident, saying, “In one of the stadiums, the system sent a report to the maintenance official there about a leak in one of the pipes on a certain floor, and when the report arrived, one of the concerned managers noticed that the pictures sent in the report were familiar to him because his office is on this floor.” He was surprised because he did not notice this incident, even though he passes there daily, so he went to the scene of the accident and indeed found that there was a slight leak. Hamad adds, “This incident indicates that we are here in the command and control center, and with the technology used, we can help the different work teams in the stadiums, regardless of the distance.”
Digital twins are one of the technologies used in the command and control center, but it is not the only technology, so stay with us during the World Cup to update you on the latest and other technologies used in this advanced version of the World Cup.
Source: Al Jazeera
