The concept of digital twins is proposed as a new technology-led advancement to support the processes of the design, construction, and operation of built assets. Commonalities between the emerging definitions of digital twins describe them as digital or cyber environments that are bidirectionally-linked to their physical or real-life replica to enable simulation and data-centric decision making. Studies have started to investigate their role in the digitalization of asset delivery, including the management of built assets at different levels within the building and infrastructure sectors. However, questions persist regarding their actual applications and implementation challenges, including their integration with other digital technologies (i.e., building information modeling, virtual and augmented reality, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing). Within the built environment context, this study seeks to analyze the definitions and characteristics of a digital twin, its interactions with other digital technologies used in built asset delivery and operation, and its applications and challenges. To achieve this aim, the research utilizes a thorough literature review and semi-structured interviews with ten industry experts. The literature review explores the merits and the relevance of digital twins relative to existing digital technologies and highlights potential applications and challenges for their implementation. The data from the semi-structured interviews are classified into five themes: definitions and enablers of digital twins, applications and benefits, implementation challenges, existing practical applications, and future development. The findings provide a point of departure for future research aimed at clarifying the relationship between digital twins and other digital technologies and their key implementation challenges.

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Abstract:Wild cotton species can contribute a valuable gene pool for agronomically desirable cultivated tetraploid cultivars. In order to exploit diploid cotton a regeneration system is required to achieve transformation based goals. The present studies aimed at optimizing the conditions for regeneration of local varieties as well as wild species of cotton. Different callus induction media were tested with varying concentrations of hormones in which sucrose was used as nutritional source. Different explants (hypocotyls, cotyledon, root) were used to check the regeneration of both local cotton plants and wild relatives using T & G medium, BAP medium, CIM medium, EMMS medium, and cell suspension medium. Different stages of embryogenicity such as early torpedo stage, late torpedo stage, heart stage, globular stage and cotyledonary stage were observed in wild relatives of cotton. The results of this study pave the way for establishing future transformation methods.

Purpose The growing emphasis on “managerialism” in police and the pressure to employ scientific methods of performance measurement warrants the need for a structured framework. The scope of police duties is large as it relates to several preventive and corrective action related to public safety and crime management. A challenge in measuring police performance is to take into consideration a range of variables that can potentially influence performance. The purpose of this paper is to provide a structured framework for measuring different facets of police efficiency, which is especially useful in managerial decision making. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses data envelopment analysis and discusses efficiency measurement in terms of the technical, managerial and scale efficiency, resources utilization patterns, returns-to-scale analysis and measurement of super-efficiency. The application of framework is based on the data of the police stations of Lahore, a large metropolitan city in Pakistan. Findings The paper shows the application of different measures of efficiency in making decisions pertaining resources allocation, prioritizing areas for improvement and identifying benchmarks for performance improvement. Different measures of efficiency are presented in the form of a structured framework. Practical implications Managers can use this framework to glean rich insights into different types of efficiency and sources of inefficiency. Further, a discussion of variables provided in this paper can be especially useful in determining trade-offs during the selection of inputs and outputs. Originality/value The key contribution of this paper is in providing a multifaceted efficiency measurement framework, that is capable of providing rich insights into the sources of inefficiency and helps scientific decision making. To the best of our knowledge, such a multifaceted approach has not been provided in previous publications.