Digital Twins and TIPSS Innovation Forum

Digital twins—virtual replicas of real-world entities, systems, or processes—are becoming foundational technologies across sectors.  Originally developed in engineering to monitor and simulate complex physical assets, digital twins are now expanding into broader cyber-physical infrastructures, where digital models continuously interact with and influence the physical world. From health monitoring devices to smart cities, finance systems to supply chains, digital twins are poised to reshape how we understand, predict, and control dynamic environments.

Yet this profound transformation raises equally profound challenges for Trust, Identity, Privacy, Security and Safety (TIPSS). When a digital twin mirrors not just machines but individuals, organisations, and entire communities, new risks emerge: How do we ensure that identity is protected when behavioural patterns are modelled? How do we maintain trust when data-driven simulations drive real-world outcomes? Who is accountable when digital twins make decisions that impact lives? How do we secure the integrity of interconnected digital-physical systems against attack, bias, or failure?

Key information:

Digital Twins and TIPSS is a two-day Innovation Forum in Manchester, convening interdisciplinary experts to explore these frontier questions. Through keynote provocations, collaborative working groups, and strategic horizon-scanning, we will map the evolving landscape and set out a research and policy agenda for responsible innovation.

This forum will bring together interdisciplinary expertise from AI, cybersecurity, law, social sciences, engineering, and ethics to critically examine the opportunities and risks of digital twins. Whether you’re creating digital twins, regulating them, or studying their impact, this is your opportunity to shape a critical conversation about the future of identity, safety, and trust in a world of living simulations.

The primary objective of this Innovation Forum is to critically examine the trust, identity, privacy, security and safety (TIPSS) implications of digital twin technologies across different sectors. The specific goals are:

• To define and map the emerging challenges and risks posed by the deployment of digital twins in cyber-physical infrastructures.

• To explore how TIPSS principles can be embedded into the design, governance, and use of digital twins by design.

• To foster interdisciplinary collaboration between technologists, social scientists, legal scholars, policymakers, and practitioners working on digital twins and related systems.

• To identify future research priorities and areas where new regulatory, technical, or ethical frameworks are urgently needed.

• To catalyse the development of a cross-sectoral community of practice around responsible digital twin innovation.

  
  

Possible Innovation Forum outputs:

• A position paper summarising the key challenges, opportunities, and recommended next steps for embedding TIPS considerations into digital twin development and deployment.

• The formation of a cross-disciplinary network of researchers and practitioners interested in advancing responsible digital twin innovation.

• Scoping of potential follow-on activities, including joint funding applications, collaborative publications, and further workshops or working groups.

• Recommendations for policy and industry engagement, providing SPRITE+ and its wider community with material to influence future governance, standards, and best practices related to digital twins and cyber-physical infrastructures.

  
  

Dates and event format:

This Innovation forum is a two day in-person workshop on 28th & 29th October in Manchester. The event will involve a mixture of keynote provocations, deliberative breakout groups, and futures exercises.

After the in-person event, further ad hoc online meetings around specific objectives and a dissemination webinar will take place. The details of these will be decided at the in-person event.