A framework for development and integration of digital twins in construction

Abstract

Generation and sharing of data have always been critical within the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation (AECO) sector due to its fragmentation and it is well recognized that this led to an inefficient and poor integration of processes along the building lifecycle. Despite the introduction of Building Information Modelling (BIM) that enhances interoperability many issues related to the management of information evolution still persist. Management of vast amount of data is complex especially in change management process during construction phase when a real-time processing, integration and immediate feedback are usually necessary. In order to exploit the potential of digital technologies for process efficiency improvement linking directly to BIM models and defining BIM processes is necessary. Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), commonly applied to other engineering fields, embody the key approach to complex construction management and model-based information use. The challenge is not only to support the various phases of the building’s life cycle, but also to capture its multidisciplinary nature which has led to the creation of various frameworks. To this aim, “digital twin” with its dynamic digital representation of the physical system continuously updated with latter’s performance, maintenance and health status data can represent a valuable tool. However, current MBSE digital twins face the following challenges: specific domains applications, unrelated modelling theories, different semantic models and uncommon storage representations. All these issues led to seamless integration across disciplines during the whole lifecycle. MBSE toolchain is an emerging technique in the area of systems engineering which is expected to become a next generation approach for supporting complex Cyber-Physical System (CPS) development as the integration system of systems. This paper proposes a framework for development of digital twin integration based on MBSE toolchain technique, providing a semantic integration among layers such as social (integration of stakeholders’ views), process (integration of management models for process control and monitoring), technical (integration of domain specific model for predictive co- simulation), information (integration of data, model and tool operations). The framework has two main purposes: to support toolchain development with a Model Based System Engineering approach; to promote interoperability of the whole developed toolchain through a service-oriented approach where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network.