Defining a Taxonomy for Construction Digital Twin Use Cases
Open Access
- Author:
- Cramer, Madeline
- Area of Honors:
- Architectural Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Architectural Engineering
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- John Messner, Thesis Supervisor
Richard Mistrick, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Construction
Digital Twins
Automation
Technology
AECO Industry - Abstract:
- The use of digital tools across the construction industry has become increasingly popular in recent years, with the rise of technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), Internet of Things (IoT), drones, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), among others. With increasingly complex construction projects have come unique constructability challenges where the use of digital technologies has aided in the design and construction process. The use of BIM across the industry has laid the foundational work to implement Construction Digital Twins, CDTs, a living digital model which updates in near real-time to accurately reflect the construction process. A major challenge of the implementation of Construction Digital Twins lies in the identification of specific use cases for CDT adoption along with standard implementation approaches. The goal of this research is to use a content analysis of existing literature to identify core elements of a definition and scope of the term “Construction Digital Twin,” and create a taxonomy of Construction Digital Twin Use Cases on construction projects. This research aims to alleviate misconceptions of the term’s usage with a common definition of the term and to create a taxonomy for implementation that provides a common definition and organization of CDT use cases. With a formal definition and a taxonomy for use, the goal is to enable more widespread usage of CDTs to aid in the growing complexity of construction projects. The analysis identified six attributes for Construction Digital Twins, which include the following; virtual representation, physical counterpart, the automated connection from the digital world to the physical world, the automated connection from the digital world to the physical world, simulation, and prediction of future behavior. After reviewing use cases, sixty-five use cases were defined leveraging a common representational structure of “CDT Use to Desired Result using a DT Method.” After the use cases were documented, they were organized into a taxonomy, which focused on the five major classes of Gather, Generate, Analyze, Communicate, and Realize. Upon documentation of the taxonomy, several areas for future research were identified, including a more comprehensive list of use cases, identification of more specific methods for application and a structured approach for applying multiple use cases at once.