On Wednesday, July 10, WTS Boston’s Professional Development Committee hosted Mark Ricketson from the Massachusetts Port Authority to discuss Digital Twins.

Mark is the Program Manager for the Design Technologies Integration Group in Massport’s Department of Capital Programs and Environmental Affairs, and has worked at Massport since 2018.

Mark started the presentation with general definitions on what a digital twin is, which is a digital version of reality. He explained that Massport’s definition of a digital twin is a “virtual representation of physical assets across their life cycle meant to develop and enhance processes and technologies that improve decision-making, optimize priorities assessment, manage assets, and retain knowledge”.

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Mark described the 6 different phases of the digital twin maturity model, which include reality capture, map/model, model/Building Information Modeling (BIM) data, real time data, 2-way integration, and autonomous Operations and Maintenance (O&M). Mark also went through a few different Massport project examples from phase 0 to phase 5, to show how Massport is using this technology.  The presentation ended with an explanation about what Massport has achieved (which is implementing phases 0 to 3) and where it is going with digital twins. 

A question-and-answer period was held after Mark’s presentation. 22 people attended this event virtually.