Digital twins and digital technologies: specific features and prospects in the coal industry

Across all sectors of the Russian economy, the adoption of digital technologies (DT) is accelerating, with high-tech industries leading the way. The coal industry, like other extractive sectors, has been slower to embrace these solutions, yet digitalization is advancing both at the industry level and within individual companies. One of the most dynamic areas of DT development is the adoption of digital twins (DTw), which form a core element of integrated digital management systems—acting as an integrator for cross-cutting technologies and sub-technologies. This article examines current approaches to studying and implementing digital twins in the coal sector. The objective is to highlight the specific features of digitalization processes, identify barriers, and outline promising directions for the adoption of DTw in the coal industry. To this end, the article systematizes conceptual and applied approaches to DTw, proposes an original framework for defining, structuring, and classifying digital twins based on maturity levels, and identifies both general and industry-specific trends in the development of DT and DTw. The analysis demonstrates that digital twins are a critical tool for managing value chains, and their effectiveness depends on the maturity of production and digital technologies and on the degree of their interoperability. The study compares and evaluates international and domestic experiences of DT and DTw adoption in mining and coal companies, as well as national-level models. It identifies barriers to adoption in the coal sector and offers recommendations for overcoming them. The research applies systems and comparative analysis, bibliographic review, generalization, and expert surveys. Data sources included media reports, websites of leading coal and mining companies, expert assessments, digital project case studies, consulting reports, and primary and secondary expert surveys. The findings show that digital transformation in the coal industry, including the adoption of DTw, lags behind other sectors. This gap is driven by both general and sector-specific factors: high costs and limited resources, scale effects, the absence of a clear development model and digitalization strategy, low levels of automation in production and management, insufficient digital infrastructure, and an acute shortage of personnel with digital competencies, particularly among executives.