NEWS: Construction must evolve on from BIM to embrace digital twins

Changing demographics and lifestyles have increased the need to make our built and natural environments smarter, sustainable and connected. Recent events have only served to accelerate this – from the rise in international climate movements, to a greater appreciation of remote working practices.

BIM is a necessary pre-step which can help the building of a digital replica in the first place. For a digital twin, the “right-in-time” connections between cyber and physical assets are crucial.

For digital twins to evolve in and beyond construction, the built asset industry needs to embrace digitisation much like manufacturing and other industries have. This will help us build better and live better.

What is a digital twin?

A digital twin is a digital representation – a mirror or replica – of a physical thing, such as an asset, process, system or sector. But for the built asset industry, digital twins play a profound role in how owners manage built assets and how consumers interact with them.

The two-way connection between the digital and physical asset is key. As the cost of sensor technology has reduced, Internet of Things solutions are readily available so objects in a building become smart construction objects, sharing data with the digital twin. Data transformation tools allow better insights and decisions by using artificial intelligence, machine learning, or basic data analysis providing data insights and enabling interventions (recommended actions or changes).

These interventions are fed back to the physical asset, providing better outcomes. The more that machine-to-machine data exchanges are used, the better the results.

Data is exchanged between the physical asset and digital twin at right-in-time connections, depending on the purpose of the digital twin. If the digital twins’ purpose is to facilitate operations, real-time data might be required. If the purpose is to facilitate better planning or resilience, the refresh rate of data could be once a week or month.

Ecosystem of digital twins

Consider transportation as a sector with numerous systems – road, rail, metro or air. Many have a physical asset connected to a digital twin and these digital twins can be connected together. If you had the digital twin of a train link connecting to other transport systems, these could share information about potential issues with the rail system in a certain area – for example, whether it creates a busier road system nearby. That issue could be recognised and avoided.

Imagine what would happen if the built asset industry operated in the same way, connecting to waste, water, transport, energy, or our green spaces.

An ecosystem of digital twins could result in a city that learns from how we live, combining multiple data sources to continually improve everything that we interact with. The expansion, enhancements, or regeneration of that city would be determined based on the data captured and analysed by the ecosystem of digital twins, enabling it to continually improve and adapt to the needs of its citizens.

Considerations for the digital twin ecosystem

There are still many things unclear in the digital world. Information needs to be properly captured, stored and able to be utilised. Various tools used in the built asset world can help us to achieve this:

• A true common data environment assists in design, build, and operations
• Model coordination within the BIM methodology helps to unlock new levels of visibility, coordination, and productivity across people and processes
• Critical design and construction activities can be supported through planning and scheduling solutions
• Assets can be managed through project and asset lifecycle management solutions

As BIM evolves, the built asset industry is transforming the way it manages information and data. The next phase is about using this information to connect digital twins together to help improve people’s lives.

This article was written for NewCivilEngineer by Frank Weiss a senior director of new products for BIM and innovation at Oracle Construction and Engineering