A digital twin is a virtual copy of a physical asset (

A digital twin is a virtual copy of a physical asset (factory, production line, structure, etc.) or a process that allows visualising, monitoring and modelling the asset continuously based on sensor data. A digital twin ideally allows reproducing exactly the physical asset performance, working condition, integrity and updating its status in real or near-real time. To achieve its purpose the digital twin technology is based on different technologies: performance and monitoring sensors, Industrial Internet of Things, Cloud data storage and processing, data analytics, machine learning and modelling (FEA, Component oriented). The digital twin not only allows to understand how the asset works and performs but it allows to simulate different scenarios allowing performance optimisation, to understand the integrity of the asset and to converge not only towards condition-based maintenance but also to perform more accurate prognosis estimating the life and degradation of assets with higher precision. Finally, the digital twin allows thanks to the best possible understand of assets performance and integrity to design the next generation of assets by addressing the oversized subsystems and the unreliable subsystems as well as the performance which impacts on capital and operation investments.