The Institute for the Protection of Terrestrial Infrastructures aims at the stable supply of society. The development of methods for detecting and defending against threats is just as much a part of the tasks as improved management in the event of major emergencies. In the department "Digital Twins for Infrastructures", complex networked supply systems, socio-technical interrelationships as well as buildings and technical facilities are modeled and simulated in terms of structure and behavior. By tracking the models with real-time data and providing intelligent tools for crisis teams and emergency forces, digital twins are created that provide new possibilities for monitoring and responding to crises. They also provide a basis for analyzing and optimizing the resilience of terrestrial infrastructures.

To use the Digital Twin effectively, it must provide attractive tools, whose added value contributes to e.g. the decision making in crisis situations or the possibility to investigate different scenarios to improve the resilience. To reach this goal, an agent-based simulation with predictive power is developed.

Socio-technical models used in Digital Twins have to include human factors i.e. the interaction between people and their environment, e.g., the operation and maintenance of technical systems or the transport of resources. Currently, the generation of such socio-technical models is time-intensive due to the high amount of manual work that is necessary within the modeling process. Thus, the application is limited to the previously selected infrastructure.

Within the project Automated Model Generation new methods should be developed to automate the information extraction from real-world data and its use to generate models. To adapt these methods to human factors and apply them on Digital Twins as an agent-based model, agent types has to be defined and described including their roles and goals within the infrastructures as well as their moving behavior and interaction with technical systems.

Your mission is the automated modeling and simulation of pedestrian flows and socio-technical interactions as part of the Digital Twin generation process. This includes the following responsibilities:

• analysis, verification and validation of existing models and software
• development of a method to automatically initiate the pedestrian flow simulation. This includes:
  • automated generation of navigation fields based on components for geometry and technical systems
  • development of a Role- and Functionality catalogue for persons, their goals and related processes
  • definition of interaction between agents
• conception of a method to enhance the pedestrian flow simulation model by interaction for
  • the connection to real-time data
  • and the coupling with other simulators
• application of the methods on real, representative infrastructures and companies throughout projects

You will contribute to a research project that deals with the automatization of the creation of Digital Twins for critical infrastructures and functional, interactive Virtual Environments. The fast and efficient generation of Digital Twins enables its application within crisis situation and therefore supports during all phases of current and historical crisis situations.

You will implement your ideas in a dynamic and innovative institute of the German Aerospace Center. You can expect an advanced team spirit, excellent infrastructure with state-of-the-art equipment and current development environments. We also actively support you in your professional and scientific development.