Abstract
The widespread adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the recent emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) applications offer several new insights and decision-making capabilities throughout the life cycle of the built environment. In recent years, the ability of real-time connectivity to online sensors deployed in an environment has led to the emergence of the concept of the Digital Twin of the built environment. Digital Twins aim to achieve synchronization of the real world with a virtual platform for seamless management and control of the construction process, facility management, environment monitoring, and other life cycle processes in the built environment. However, research in Digital Twins for the built environment is still in its nascent stages and there is a need to understand the advances in the underlying enabling technologies and establish a convergent context for ongoing and future research. This paper conducted a systematic review to identify the development of the emerging technologies facilitating the evolution of BIM to Digital Twins in built environment applications. A total of 100 related papers including 23 review papers were selected and reviewed. In order to systematically classify the reviewed studies, the authors developed a five-level ladder categorization system based on the building life cycle to reflect the current state-of-the-art in Digital Twin applications. In each level of this taxonomy, applications were further categorized based on their research domains (e.g., construction process, building energy performance, indoor environment monitoring). In addition, the current state-of-art in technologies enabling Digital Twins was also summarized from the reviewed literature. It was found that most of the prior studies conducted thus far have not fully exploited or realized the envisioned concept of the Digital Twin, and thus classify under the earlier ladder categories. Based on the analysis of the reviewed work and the trends in ongoing research, the authors propose a concept of an advanced Digital Twin for building management as a baseline for further studies.
Highlights
The lifecycle of a building primarily consists of the design, construction, operation, maintenance, and end of life stages where each stage can be divided into superimposed information layers that require efficient information exchange strategies for interoperability across all lifecycle stages (Vanlande et al 2008)
It can be observed that a large portion of the previous studies was classified as Level 2, meaning that many of the previous real-world applications of “Digital Twins” starting from Building Information Modeling (BIM)-supported simulations for tasks such as 4D construction process simulations and building energy performance evaluations have been shown to help with the evaluation of the building life cycle and achieve a more efficient and environmentally friendly building
It was observed that several recent studies start with the intent of applying BIM for higher-level applications, they generally limit themselves to staying within the original applications of BIM, as most of them strongly classify in Level 2 and Level 3 categories
Summary
The lifecycle of a building primarily consists of the design, construction, operation, maintenance, and end of life stages where each stage can be divided into superimposed information layers that require efficient information exchange strategies for interoperability across all lifecycle stages (Vanlande et al 2008). Appropriate integration of BIM and IoT technologies can help with the real-time monitoring of the construction process and building indoor environment status (Lee et al 2016, Dave et al 2018, Li et al 2018, Natephraa and Motamedib 2019). The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the methodology adopted for searching and categorizing the reviewed papers; Section 3 categorizes them according to the developed ladder taxonomy as well as research domains within each level; Section 4 summarizes the current state-of-art technologies and methods for achieving Digital Twins in the built environment; In Section 5, the authors describe the requirements and expected features of an ideal Digital Twin with an example for indoor environment control as a reference for future studies.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
