Digital application platform architecture

A digital application platform architecture for implementing a class of digital application within an industrial plant operational decision support system, comprising:

• a set of computational modules configured to perform model-based computations relating to a plant;
• a scheduler module configured to orchestrate an execution of the set of computational modules;
• a resource manager module configured to allocate computational resources to enable the execution of the set of computational modules;
• a data manager configured to communicate with external data servers providing plant-related data and plant control;
• data validation modules configured to validate data received from the external data servers and to validate results computed by the set of computational modules;
• and
• a digital application metafile, accessible by all components of the digital application, containing softcoded data governing a scheduling of the execution, and the data exchange between, the set of computational modules;
• wherein the set of computational modules and the digital application metafile are specific to the class of digital application being implemented;
• and wherein the softcoded data defines the information relevant to the class of digital application in terms of categories of variables required in the models used by the set of computational modules and attributes associated with each category.