EduTwin: A Unified Digital Twin Architecture for Agricultural Knowledge Preservation

The application of digital twin technology in agriculture has largely been limited to optimizing agricultural operations, while its use in the preservation and transmission of knowledge has received relatively little attention. This paper has proposed EduTwin, a framework where a digital twin, using the same IoT data as any other agricultural DT system, will in addition serve six purposes related to learning and knowledge retention through a shared simulator. In light of the literature surveyed in this paper, EduTwin could be considered a conceptual framework that attempts to solve the problems of multi-audience learning, tacit knowledge, live data to teaching, and cross-institutional design. While most of the framework elements need empirical testing in order to assess their value, and while certain elements pose governance and methodology problems that have been highlighted rather than solved in this paper, EduTwin suggests a viewpoint that does not seem to have gained sufficient traction in contemporary research on digital twins in agriculture, namely treating the DT not only as an operational monitor but as a tool for preserving and transmitting knowledge from farmer to farmer. Moving towards such a view through pilot work, as outlined in Section IV, may be considered the next step in this research line.

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