Digital Twin technology toward more sustainable buildings

Abstract

The integration of digital technologies in the form of sensor networks and automation systems has a significant impact on the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction- Facility Management (AEC-FM) industry in terms of data monitoring and manage- ment. By combining the real and digital worlds, developments in digital technologies like Digital Twin provide a high-level depiction of buildings and their assets. This thesis covers a wide range of topics, including building information management and the interaction of building systems, where the Digital Twin technology becomes a solution to organizing data and generating new study lines on data interchange and BIM (Building Information Modeling)-FM interoperability. In order to contribute to digitalization and automation solutions for building management, the initial step in this thesis was to prepare a review of research on study patterns, gaps, and trends in the AEC-FM industry. After a complete bibliometric search of Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus and following selection criteria, 77 academic publica- tions about the Digital Twin application in the AEC-FM industry were labeled and clustered accordingly. The results demonstrate that information standardization, predictive maintenance, users’ comfort, and optimizations are the marked fields where the Digital Twin in the AEC-FM industry should be implemented to reach Zero Emission Buildings (ZEB). This work suggests several novel frameworks for Digital Twin for building management as a place to start a further investigation.