Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance of Digital Twins (TEA-DT)
Lead Research Organisation:
The Alan Turing Institute
Department Name: Research
Abstract
In recent years, considerable effort has gone into defining "responsible" AI research and innovation. Though progress is tangible, many sectors still lack the tools and capabilities for operationalising and implementing ethical principles. Furthermore, many project teams also find it challenging to know how to achieve goals, such as fairness or explainability, and communicate that they have been realised to other stakeholders of affected users. If ignored, these gaps could hamper efforts to build public trust in AI technologies or amplify existing societal harms and inequalities caused by biased and non-transparent sociotechnical systems.
The Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance for Digital Twins (TEA-DT) project will develop an existing open-source platform, known as the Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance (TEA) Platform, which has been designed to help users navigate the process of addressing the aforementioned challenges.
The TEA platform helps users and project teams define, operationalise, and implement ethical principles as goals to be assured, and also provides means for communicating how these goals have been realised. It achieves this by guiding individuals and project teams to identify the relevant set of claims and evidence that justify their chosen ethical principles, using a participatory approach that can be embedded throughout a project's lifecycle. The output of the platform—a user-generated assurance case—can be co-designed and vetted by various stakeholders, fostering trust through open, clear, and accessible communication.
The TEA platform consists of three main elements: 1) an online tool for crafting well-reasoned arguments about ethical goals, 2) user-friendly guidance to foster critical thinking among teams and organisations, and 3) a supportive community infrastructure for sharing and discussing best practices.
Although the platform is designed for a wide range of applications, the TEA-DT project will specifically focus on digital twins—virtual duplicates that are closely coupled to their physical counterpart to enable access to data and insights that can improve and optimise the way their real-world versions operate. More specifically, the project team will carry out scoping research on the assurance of digital twins within three different contexts: health, natural environment, and infrastructure.
Although digital twins promise vast societal benefit in these areas, the fact that they increasingly rely on various forms of AI and often operate in safety-critical settings, means that several challenges must be addressed to ensure their ethical and trustworthy development. For instance, in health, questions about data privacy and ownership arise; environmental applications must tackle bias and fairness issues, complicated by global scales and differing laws; and in infrastructure, technical challenges concerning uncertainty communication give rise to additional needs for transparency and explainability.
In collaboration with key partners and stakeholders, the TEA-DT project will carry out scoping research to co-develop exemplary assurance cases and enhance the platform's features to make it more user-friendly and integrated into workflows. By committing to open research and community-building principles, the project aims to a) systematically share best practices and standards, b) make the operationalisation of ethical principles more accessible and inclusive, and c) integrate the project sustainably with existing networks and communities.
The Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance for Digital Twins (TEA-DT) project will develop an existing open-source platform, known as the Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance (TEA) Platform, which has been designed to help users navigate the process of addressing the aforementioned challenges.
The TEA platform helps users and project teams define, operationalise, and implement ethical principles as goals to be assured, and also provides means for communicating how these goals have been realised. It achieves this by guiding individuals and project teams to identify the relevant set of claims and evidence that justify their chosen ethical principles, using a participatory approach that can be embedded throughout a project's lifecycle. The output of the platform—a user-generated assurance case—can be co-designed and vetted by various stakeholders, fostering trust through open, clear, and accessible communication.
The TEA platform consists of three main elements: 1) an online tool for crafting well-reasoned arguments about ethical goals, 2) user-friendly guidance to foster critical thinking among teams and organisations, and 3) a supportive community infrastructure for sharing and discussing best practices.
Although the platform is designed for a wide range of applications, the TEA-DT project will specifically focus on digital twins—virtual duplicates that are closely coupled to their physical counterpart to enable access to data and insights that can improve and optimise the way their real-world versions operate. More specifically, the project team will carry out scoping research on the assurance of digital twins within three different contexts: health, natural environment, and infrastructure.
Although digital twins promise vast societal benefit in these areas, the fact that they increasingly rely on various forms of AI and often operate in safety-critical settings, means that several challenges must be addressed to ensure their ethical and trustworthy development. For instance, in health, questions about data privacy and ownership arise; environmental applications must tackle bias and fairness issues, complicated by global scales and differing laws; and in infrastructure, technical challenges concerning uncertainty communication give rise to additional needs for transparency and explainability.
In collaboration with key partners and stakeholders, the TEA-DT project will carry out scoping research to co-develop exemplary assurance cases and enhance the platform's features to make it more user-friendly and integrated into workflows. By committing to open research and community-building principles, the project aims to a) systematically share best practices and standards, b) make the operationalisation of ethical principles more accessible and inclusive, and c) integrate the project sustainably with existing networks and communities.
Publications
Burr C
(2025)
The Future of Digital Well-Being
Wagg D
(2025)
The philosophical foundations of digital twinning
in Data-Centric Engineering
| Description | The TEA-DT project focused on developing methods for ensuring digital twins (DTs) are designed, developed, and deployed in trustworthy and ethical ways. Digital twins are virtual representations of physical systems (like human hearts, transportation networks, or environmental systems) that can be dynamically updated with real-time data, have predictive capabilities, and can influence or control the physical systems they represent. The TEA-DT project had three main objectives: 1. Develop an open-source platform (the TEA platform) for building clear and accessible assurance regarding DT goals 2. Show how the Gemini Principles (a framework for DT development) can be operationalised 3. Adopt a participatory approach to assurance based on real-world use cases across health, natural environment, and infrastructure domains Key components of the project: - The TEA Platform: An open-source tool that allows teams to demonstrate how their DT projects meet specific goals through "argument-based assurance." This involves creating structured arguments (assurance cases) that link top-level goals to specific claims about a project's properties, backed by evidence. - Gemini Principles: The project worked with these nine principles that guide DT development, organized into categories of Purpose (public good, value creation, insight), Trust (security, openness, quality), and Function (federation, curation, evolution). - Co-Design Workshops: The team brought together 15 teams working on DTs across different domains to understand challenges and co-design assurance cases. Each domain group chose a different priority goal: - Health: Explainability - Natural Environment: Accuracy - Infrastructure: Safety Community Survey: A "community pulse check" assessed the challenges and capabilities in the DT community, finding that: Technical performance and economic properties are being assured more often than ethical or legal principles Principles like federation and evolution were rated as most challenging to implement Key barriers to building connected DTs included intellectual property rights, data confidentiality, digital skills gaps, and interoperability issues Data sharing presents significant challenges, with 67% of those interested in sharing data finding it difficult to establish trust Key findings from the project: Principles alone are insufficient - they need to be translated into practical assurance activities and techniques. The project demonstrated how to bridge high-level principles with practical implementation. The most challenging Gemini Principles to implement were those requiring ecosystem-wide collaboration (like federation) and those with inherent ambiguity (like public good). Data sharing and interoperability remain significant barriers to developing connected DTs, with issues around trust, intellectual property, and data governance being particularly challenging. Assurance communication methods are often informal and unsystematic, with meetings being the primary medium rather than standardized documentation. Many DT projects are already considering aspects of assurance, but could benefit from more structured approaches and shared best practices. The project team is continuing this work by developing new collaborative features for the TEA platform, expanding into healthcare applications (particularly with the CVD-Net cardiac digital twins project), and building an open repository of assurance cases to share knowledge and best practices across the DT community. |
| Exploitation Route | We are using the outcomes of this funding in multiple projects and partnerships, to better understand the assurance requirements associated with AI-enabled digital twins. |
| Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Construction Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Energy Environment Healthcare Government Democracy and Justice Security and Diplomacy Transport |
| Description | The TEA-DT project has catalysed significant progress in establishing frameworks for trustworthy and ethical implementation of digital twins (DTs) across critical national sectors including healthcare, infrastructure, and environmental management. This work arrives at a pivotal moment when DTs are transitioning from primarily industrial applications to addressing major societal challenges such as climate resilience, healthcare personalisation, and critical infrastructure management. 1. Emerging Economic and Societal Impact The development of the open-source TEA platform demonstrates organisational and economic potential by addressing a critical market gap: the need for standardised, transparent approaches to assuring DT implementations. This is reinforced by our community pulse check results and analysis. By enabling organisations to build and share clear assurance cases, the TEA platform contributes to risk reduction and increased adoption confidence, particularly in safety-critical domains. The economic impact extends to potentially accelerating innovation in the UK's digital twin ecosystem by reducing barriers to cross-sector collaboration and data sharing. Societally, the project's emphasis on ethical principles such as fairness and explainability has laid the foundations for DT implementations that prioritise societal benefit alongside technical performance. This contributes to building public trust in emerging digital technologies at a time when many institutions and technologies face increasing scrutiny. 2. Cross-Sector Impact 2.1 Healthcare Sector Collaboration with cardiovascular DT researchers, and further funding (e.g. CVD-Net) demonstrates how the TEA methodology can be applied to critical healthcare applications. For cardiac digital twins, focused on udnerstanding pulmonary arterial hypertension, the methodology and platform provides a structured framework that enables healthcare professionals to confidently incorporate DTs into treatment decisions with clear understanding of a model's limitations and capabilities. 2.2 Environmental Sector Partnership with the British Antarctic Survey showcases how the TEA approach supports scientific applications in understanding complex environmental systems. For remote and data-sparse regions like Antarctica, the TEA platform provides robust methodologies for tracking and communicating uncertainties and limitations in AI-based sea-ice forecasting used for both research and conservation activities. James Byrne (Lead Research Software Engineer, Digital Innovation Team, British Antarctic Survey) had this to say about the collaboration: > "The TEA-DT project has helped open my eyes in describing how we evidence trustworthiness and ethical responsibilities in our aim to build Digital Twins of the Polar Regions. This aids turning environmental research, AI and data science systems into operationally integrated systems. These responsibilities cannot be overlooked or left as an afterthought. The TEA-DT platform and introduction to assurance cases has helped me understand how to describe the context of and potential implications of developing systems, providing a repeatable method of description otherwise unavailable to our digital development process. This approach to assurance gives me hope that we can responsibly expedite development towards fully scaled Digital Twins, whilst ensuring we employ responsible and transparent due diligence." 2.3 Infrastructure Sector The project's collaboration with infrastructure stakeholders addresses the pressing need for safety assurance in DT implementations for critical national infrastructure, with particular relevance to crisis resilience applications identified as national priorities. Dr Burr is now co-lead of the Uncertainty and Trust Special Interest Group for the UKRI DTNet+, where he will continue to build on this impact. 3. Challenges Overcome A significant challenge addressed by the project was bridging the theory-practice gap in implementing ethical principles-a core objective of the UKRI BRAID programme. While many organisations subscribe to high-level principles like the Gemini Principles, translating these into concrete practices has proven difficult. The TEA-DT project directly tackled this through participatory design workshops that produced specific, actionable assurance cases grounded in real-world implementations. The project also made progress in addressing technical barriers to data sharing and federation by identifying specific challenges through community survey work and providing structured frameworks for documenting data governance approaches within assurance cases. 4. Academic Impact Academically, the project has helped lay the foundations for a new interdisciplinary research area at the intersection of trustworthy AI, ethics, digital twin technology, and formal assurance methodologies. The integration of safety case approaches from critical systems engineering with broader ethical and governance considerations creates a novel methodological framework applicable across multiple domains. The project has also established communities of practice bridging technical and social concerns, exemplified by the collaborative workshops and community survey. This approach has potential to become a model for responsible innovation in other emerging data-driven technologies beyond digital twins. We will continue to work with networks and programmes such as BRAID and RAI UK to achieve this. 5. Policy Impact By leveraging existing UK strengths in both digital twins and AI assurance, the project supports the national ambition to lead in both the technical development and responsible governance of these technologies, demonstrating how academic-led initiatives can incorporate public and private sector expertise to advance national strategic objectives. The TEA-DT project has had notable policy impact on national guidance regarding AI assurance frameworks. The project is specifically cited in the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology's guidance on AI assurance, where its argument-based assurance methodology is recognised as a valuable approach to demonstrating the trustworthiness of AI systems, including digital twins. The TEA platform and methodology align with the government's vision for creating a robust "assurance ecosystem" with well-defined roles and responsibilities for various stakeholders including regulators, standards bodies, and research organizations. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2024 |
| Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Construction,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Security and Diplomacy,Transport |
| Impact Types | Societal Economic Policy & public services |
| Description | Directly influenced and shaped national policy guidance |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in other policy documents |
| Impact | Our project and collaboration was cited in national policy guidance, as an example of how research can support the UKs AI Assurance Ecosystem. We continue to advise and work directly with the UKs Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology. |
| URL | https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introduction-to-ai-assurance/introduction-to-ai-assurance |
| Description | Networks of Cardiovascular Digital Twins (CVD-Net) |
| Amount | ÂŁ8,844,327 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/Z531297/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2023 |
| End | 09/2028 |
| Title | Interactive platform and resources for assurance |
| Description | The Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance (TEA) platform is an open-source and community-oriented tool that has been designed and developed by researchers at the Alan Turing Institute and University of York to support the process of developing and communicating trustworthy and ethical assurance cases. The TEA platform helps project teams-including researchers, developers, decision-makers, managers, auditors, regulators, and users-answer these questions in a systematic manner. It achieves this through three interlocking features: 1. An interactive tool for building assurance cases 2. A set of educational resources that help users get the most out of the tool 3. The community infrastructure that promotes open and collaborative practices |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Supported multiple collaborations and events (e.g. structured activities for workshops). Currently being used across mutliple organisations, including: - The Alan Turing Institute - Met Office - National Oceanography Centre - British Antarctic Survey - NATS UK - Imperial College London - Ministry of Justice - University of York - Ministry of Defence |
| URL | https://assuranceplatform.azurewebsites.net/ |
| Title | Community Pulse Check: Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance of Digital Twins |
| Description | The Community Pulse Check is a survey that was part of the scoping research undertaken for this project. Dr. Sophie Arana led its design and delivery to help identify current attitudes, needs, and capabilities among digital twin practitioners (e.g., researchers and developers). This survey was carried out in partnership with the Digital Twin Hub (Connected Places Catapult) given their extensive network of over 5000 members. This repository contains materials for the Community Pulse Check project, including: Results: A report on the final results and insights from the analysis. Online Data Collection: Code and tools for survey deployment and data gathering. Data Analysis: Scripts for processing, analyzing, and visualizing the collected data. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | - Shaped direction of TEA-DT project. - Informed publication of policy report. - Helped identify further collaboration and partnership opportunities (e.g. with DT Hub). |
| URL | https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/teadt-community-survey |
| Title | Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance Platform |
| Description | The Trustworthy and Ethical Assurance (TEA) Platform is an innovative, open-source tool designed to facilitate the process of creating, managing and sharing assurance cases for data-driven technologies, such as digital twins or AI. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | - Inclusion in further funding (EPSRC CVD-Net) - Basis of partnership with DT Hub - Ongoing collaboration and partnership with University of York, exploring further funding opportunities - Currently exploring commercial opporunities with professional services firms (e.g. DNV, Deloitte). |
| URL | https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AssurancePlatform?tab=readme-ov-file |
| Description | Community Pulse Check |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | An online survey carried out in partnership with the DT Hub (Connected Places Catapult), Centre for Assuring Autonomy (University of York), and Responsible Technology Adoption Unit (Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology) into the challenges and opportunities associated with the TEA platform. Impact and Noteworthy Changes: - Results and analysis have been published in a publicly available GitHub repository (https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/teadt-community-survey/), with a (co-badged) report available online as well (https://digitaltwinhub.co.uk/trustworthy-and-ethical-assurance-of-digital-twins-putting-the-gemini-principles-into-practice/). - The team have forged new partnerships with key organisations (e.g. DT Hub, Connected Places Catapult) and identified several priority areas of focus for future work, including goals that intersect with responsible AI adoption. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/teadt-community-survey/ |
| Description | Participatory Design Workshops |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A series of participatory design workshops (x9) and stakeholder engagement workshops (x2) were held with participants from DT community. These events focused on socialising the TEA platform and its methodology to understand and respond to current needs and challenges. Impact and Noteworthy Changes: -Greater adoption and awareness of the TEA platform by key stakeholder groups (see below for details). - Ongoing collaborations with key partners to develop assurance cases and promote work through a public repository-to be linked with the newly announced AI Assurance Platform (Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology). - Several new features for the TEA Platform have already been implemented, based on user feedback, and a public repository is due to be released in early 2025 to help promote the work started during these workshops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.turing.ac.uk/events/trustworthy-and-ethical-assurance-digital-twins |