arXiv subjects

David Wagg

Publications and source records attributed to David Wagg.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Design of policy digital twins incorporating multi-level agent based modelling

Digital twins are used across many industries to enable better decision making. However, while policy makers at all levels (including city, national and supranational scales) have expressed a desire to integrate digital twins into their workflows, this adoption has been slow to materialise. In this paper, we discuss the key issues associated with policy digital twins, and the ways in which they differ from, and are similar to, their counterparts in other areas. We describe how multi-level agent based modelling can be used within policy digital twins to include the effects of human behaviours on outcomes; an aspect that is often largely overlooked. We also describe how digital twins can be designed for policy use cases, and present as a case study the design of a policy digital twin incorporating multi-level agent based modelling to aid a UK city council (local authority) in delivering energy transition policy. After describing both the design method used and the resultant digital twin, we discuss the effectiveness of both, as well as how the ways in which different contexts might shape the future architecture of the digital twin.

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arXiv2026

Agentic Digital Twins: A Taxonomy of Capabilities for Understanding Possible Futures

As digital twins (DTs) evolve to become more agentic through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), they acquire capabilities that extend beyond dynamic representation of their target systems. This paper presents a taxonomy of agentic DTs organised around three fundamental dimensions: the locus of agency (external, internal, distributed), the tightness of coupling (loose, tight, constitutive), and model evolution (static, adaptive, reconstructive). From the resulting 27-configuration space, we identify nine illustrative configurations grouped into three clusters: "The Present" (existing tools and emerging steering systems), "The Threshold" (where emergent properties appear and coupling becomes constitutive), and "The Frontier" (where systems gain reconstructive capabilities). Our analysis explores how agentic DTs exercise performative power--not merely representing physical systems but actively participating in constituting them. Using traffic navigation systems as examples, we show how even passive tools can exhibit emergent performativity, while advanced configurations risk performative lock-in. Drawing on performative prediction theory, we trace a progression from passive tools through active steering to ontological reconstruction, examining how constitutive coupling enables systems to create self-validating realities. Understanding these configurations is essential for navigating the transformation from DTs as mirror worlds to DTs as architects of new ontologies.

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arXiv2023

Full-scale modal testing of a Hawk T1A aircraft for benchmarking vibration-based methods

Research developments for structural dynamics in the fields of design, system identification and structural health monitoring (SHM) have dramatically expanded the bounds of what can be learned from measured vibration data. However, significant challenges remain in the tasks of identification, prediction and evaluation of full-scale structures. A significant aid in the roadmap to the application of cutting-edge methods to the demands of in-service engineering structures, is the development of comprehensive benchmark datasets. With the aim of developing a useful and worthwhile benchmark dataset for structural dynamics, an extensive testing campaign is presented here. This recent campaign was performed on a decommissioned BAE system Hawk T1A aircraft at the Laboratory for Verification and Validation (LVV) in Sheffield. The aim of this paper is to present the dataset, providing details on the structure, experimental design, and data acquired. The collected data is made freely and openly available with the intention that it serve as a benchmark dataset for challenges in full-scale structural dynamics. Here, the details pertaining to two test phases (frequency and time domain) are presented. So as to ensure that the presented dataset is able to function as a benchmark, some baseline-level results are additionally presented for the tasks of identification and prediction, using standard approaches. It is envisaged that advanced methodologies will demonstrate superiority by favourable comparison with the results presented here. Finally, some dataset-specific challenges are described, with a view to form a hierarchy of tasks and frame discussion over their relative difficulty.

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