Preliminary Development on Expanding Digital Twin Technology to Socioeconomic Domains: A Case Study of Optimal Social Distancing Policy on COVID-19

The advancement of Fourth Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence technologies are driving a transformation from traditional industrial environments to digitally-centered industrialization. At the core of this challenging industrial advancement lies Digital Twin technology, which has already reached a mature stage of application, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Recently, the scope of Digital Twin technology has expanded beyond industrial sectors into various other sectors, including agriculture, healthcare, and smart city infrastructures, such as road networks and transportation systems. Despite the potential of Digital Twin technology, there are significant challenges in digitizing large-scale physical environments at the national level like as a socioeconomic Digital Twin. This paper presents the results of a preliminary development effort aimed at creating a part twin for socioeconomic systems. The study outlines the structural requirements for developing a national socioeconomic Digital Twin and introduces the initial development work to address these requirements and challenges. Specifically, it discusses the development of a kind of partial Digital Twin, designed to propose optimal social distancing policy during the COVID-19 pandemic based on data from early 2020 to 2022.