EtherTwin: Blockchain-based Secure Digital Twin Information Management

• Published in: Information processing & management 2021-01, Vol.58 (1), p.102425, Article 102425
• Main Authors: Putz, Benedikt, Dietz, Marietheres, Empl, Philip, Pernul, Günther
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Access control; Blockchain; Confidentiality; Cryptography; Data integrity; Data retrieval; Data storage; Decentralized application; Digital technology; Digital twin; Digital twins; Digitization; Distributed ledgers; Environment models; Industrial applications; Industry 4.0; Information management; Information sharing; Integrity; Value engineering
• ISSN: 0306-4573; 1873-5371
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102425

•EtherTwin, a blockchain-based Decentralized Application (DApp) for secure information management of Industry 4.0 assets using Digital Twins.•Secure information management, ensuring confidentiality through fine-grained access control and encryption, as well as providing integrity and availability based on the blockchain.•Quantitative and qualitative evaluation including performance/cost measurements as well as a real-world industry use case and expert interviews.•Full-featured open source prototype EtherTwin based on blockchain design patterns and state-of-the-art DApp technologies (Ethereum, Swarm). Digital Twins are complex digital representations of assets that are used by a variety of organizations across the Industry 4.0 value chain. As the digitization of industrial processes advances, Digital Twins will become widespread. As a result, there is a need to develop new secure data sharing models for a complex ecosystem of interacting Digital Twins and lifecycle parties. Decentralized Applications are uniquely suited to address these sharing challenges while ensuring availability, integrity and confidentiality. They rely on distributed ledgers and decentralized databases for data storage and processing, avoiding single points of trust. To tackle the need for decentralized sharing of Digital Twin data, this work proposes an owner-centric decentralized sharing model. A formal access control model addresses integrity and confidentiality aspects based on Digital Twin components and lifecycle requirements. With our prototypical implementation EtherTwin we show how to overcome the numerous implementation challenges associated with fully decentralized data sharing, enabling management of Digital Twin components and their associated information. For validation, the prototype is evaluated based on an industry use case and semi-structured expert interviews.