The World Avatar

A knowledge-graph-based digital twin of the world

A knowledge graph is a network of data expressed as a directed graph, where the nodes of the graph are concepts or their instances (data items) and the edges of the graph are links between related concepts or instances. Knowledge graphs are often built using the principles of Linked Data. They provide a powerful means to host, query and traverse data, and to find and retrieve related information.

The World Avatar project, with substantial contributions by CARES, CMCL, and CMPG, aims to create a digital ‘avatar’ of the real world. Its code is publicly available. The digital world is composed of a dynamic knowledge graph that contains concepts and data that describe the world, and an ecosystem of autonomous computational agents that simulate the behaviour of the world and that update the concepts and data so that the digital world remains current in time. In this manner, it is proposed that it is possible to create digital twins that are able to describe the behavior of complex systems, and by doing so provide the ability to make data-driven decisions about how to optimise the systems.

A central tenet of the World Avatar is the requirement to share data so that all the computational agents experience a self-consistent view of the world, and the requirement that data and computational agents must be interoperable across different technical and social domains. This interoperability, defined in the sense of the ability of tools and systems to understand and use the functionalities of other tools, is considered to be one of the key aspects of Industry 4.0 and will become increasingly important as the complexity and choice of tools inevitably increases. For example, considerations raised by recent reports concerning the possible role of hydrogen in the future UK energy landscape span the electrical power system, the gas grid, the potential of biomass, solar and wind energy, the transport system, heating of commercial and domestic buildings, in addition to considerations relating to the acceptance and adoption of new technologies by the public.

The World Avatar represents information in a dynamic knowledge graph using technologies from the Semantic Web stack. Unlike a traditional database, the World Avatar contains an ecosystem of autonomous computational agents that continuously update it.

Structure of the World Avatar

The main components of the dynamic knowledge graph are illustrated in the above figure. The dynamic knowledge graph contains concepts and instances that are linked to form a directed graph. The agents are described ontologically as part of the knowledge graph, and are able to perform actions on both concepts and instances. This confers versatility because it combines a design that enables agents to update and restructure the knowledge graph, with a structure that allows agents to discover and compose other agents simply by reading from and writing to the knowledge graph.

Recent Associated Preprints

335: twa: The World Avatar Python package for dynamic knowledge graphs and its application in reticular chemistry

Jiaru Bai, Simon D. Rihm, Aleksandar Kondinski, Fabio Saluz, Xinhong Deng, George Brownbridge, Sebastian Mosbach, Jethro Akroyd, and Markus Kraft, Technical Report 335, c4e-Preprint Series, Cambridge, 2025.

334: The sun always shines somewhere - the energetic feasibility of a global electricity grid with 100% renewable energy generation

Frederick Ivens, Jethro Akroyd, and Markus Kraft, Technical Report 334, c4e-Preprint Series, Cambridge, 2025.

333: Singapore MacKay Carbon Calculator Powered by The World Avatar

Mei Qi Lim, Sushant S. Garud, Srishti Ganguly, Kok Foong Lee, Li Chin Law, Yong Ren Tan, Wilson Ang, Wen Liu, Raymond Lau, Kunn Hadinoto, Iftekhar A. Karimi, Epaminondas Mastorakos, S. Viswanathan, and Markus Kraft, Technical Report 333, c4e-Preprint Series, Cambridge, 2024.

332: Beyond Connected Digital Twins – from GIS to The World Avatar

Yong Ren Tan, Markus Hofmeister, Shin Zert Phua, George Brownbridge, Kushagar Rustagi, Jethro Akroyd, Sebastian Mosbach, Amit Bhave, and Markus Kraft, Technical Report 332, c4e-Preprint Series, Cambridge, 2024.

Recent Associated Publications

Natural language access point to digital metal–organic polyhedra chemistry in The World Avatar

Simon D. Rihm, Dan N. Tran, Aleksandar Kondinski, Laura Pascazio, Fabio Saluz, Xinhong Deng, Sebastian Mosbach, Jethro Akroyd, and Markus Kraft, Data-Centric Engineering 6, 22, (2025).

Municipal heat planning within The World Avatar

Yi-Kai Tsai, Markus Hofmeister, Srishti Ganguly, Kushagar Rustagi, Yong Ren Tan, Sebastian Mosbach, Jethro Akroyd, and Markus Kraft, Energy and AI 20, 100479, (2025).

A Platform Ecosystem Providing New Data For The Energy Transition

Markus Duchon, Jessy Matar, Mahsa Faraji Shoyari, Alexander Perzylo, Ingmar Kessler, Patrick Buchenberg, Philipp Kuhn, Thomas Hamacher, Thorsten Schlachter, Wolfgang Süss, Nguyen Xuan Thinh, Haniyeh Ebrahimi Salari, Jasmin Latko, Minsheng Xu, Maxim Shamovich, Dominik Schlütter, Jérôme Frisch, Kushagar Rustagi, Markus Kraft, Carolin Ayasse, Florian Steinke, Michael Metzger, and Laura Kuper, ACM SIGENERGY Energy Informatics Review 4(4), 226-237, (2025).

Exploring the potential landscape of chemical engineering science

Claire S Adjiman, Panagiota Angeli, André Bardow, Stacey F Bent, Nigel Brandon, Katie Galloway, Raymond J Gorte, Gonzalo Guillén-Gosálbez, Claudia Gutiérrez-Antonio, Marta C Hatzell, Michael C Jewett, Marlene Kanga, Michael Köpke, Markus Kraft, Ung Lee, Yayuan Liu, Guanghui Ma, Ewa Marek, Massimo Morbidelli, Eranda Nikolla, Maria Papathanasiou, Ah-Hyung Alissa Park, Ingo Pinnau, Shi-Zhang Qiao, Vivek V Ranade, Luis Ricardez-Sandoval, Sindia M Rivera-Jiménez, Kirti Chandra Sahu, Berend Smit, Randall Q Snurr, Cíntia Soares, Kevin Solomon, Kazuhiro Takanabe, Xiaonan Wang, Fei Wei, Matthias Wesseling, Kathryn Whitehead, John M Woodley, Zaiku Xie, and Yushan Yan, Nature Chemical Engineering 2, 19-25, (2025).

Funding

This research was partly funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister's Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme.