ICDT Core Architecture
The Integrated Cognitive Digital Twin is a backbone for persistent, owner-controlled intelligence. It connects static data to dynamic workflow state, enabling systems that reason rather than just report.
The Core Concept: Twin–Artifact–Lens
The architecture decouples the "truth" of an entity from how it is viewed or acted upon:
- Twin: The persistent, evolving digital identity of an asset (well, person, system).
- Artifacts: Evidence and outputs generated by the twin over time (reports, logs, verified states).
- Lenses: Role-specific views into the twin (e.g., an Engineer View vs. an Investor View), ensuring stakeholders see only what is relevant.
System Layers
1. Data Ingestion & Curation
Raw data is never trusted blindly. The ingestion layer validates, normalizes, and semantically tags incoming telemetry before it enters the twin’s memory. This separates "noise" from "signal" at the source.
2. Memory Layer
A persistent, owner-controlled graph that stores not just the current state, but the history of state changes and the decisions that drove them. This enables "time-travel" debugging and auditable chains of custody.
3. Workflow Layer
Awareness of the "job to be done." The system understands where an asset is in its lifecycle (e.g., "Drilling - 12.25in Section"). This allows agents to apply context-specific rules rather than generic thresholds.
4. Agent Orchestration
Specialized, narrow-scope agents (e.g., "Survey QA Agent," "Torque & Drag Monitor") operate autonomously within the twin. A central orchestrator routes information to the right agent and resolves conflicts, preventing agent collision.
5. Governance & Presentation
A rigorous permissioning layer ensures that while the twin holds the total truth, external users (partners, regulators, investors) access only permissible views (Lenses). Use of deterministic logic for safety-critical decisions builds trust that probabilistic AI cannot achieve alone.
Logic Philosophy: Deterministic + Probabilistic
Trust requires predictability. ICDT enforces a strict separation of concerns:
- Deterministic (Rules/Physics): Used for safety limits, engineering constraints, and compliance. If X > Y, stop. No hallucination allowed.
- Probabilistic (LLMs/ML): Used for trend analysis, anomaly detection, and natural language synthesis. "This looks like a washout."
Security & Integration
Owner Control: The architecture is designed for sovereign data ownership. The twin lives in
the owner's environment, not a vendor's black box.
Coexistence: ICDT is not a "rip-and-replace" solution. It sits alongside existing SCADA and
ERP systems, ingesting their outputs to build higher-order intelligence.
Current Status
Architecture defined. Workflows modeled. Implementation staged.