Digital Twins in Civil Infrastructure Systems

Abstract

This research explores the existing definitions, concepts and applications surrounding the efficient implementation and use of digital twins (DTs) within civil infrastructure systems (CISs). The CISs within the scope of this research are as follows: transportation, energy, telecommunications, water and waste, as well as Smart Cities, which encompasses all of the previous. The research methodology consists of a review of current literature, a series of semi-structured interviews and a detailed survey. The outcome of this work is a refined definition of DTs within CISs, in addition to a set of recommendations for both future academic research and industry best practice.

Use Cases for District-Scale Urban Digital Twins

“…Our study focuses on finding use cases in the smart-city sector, hence it may not necessarily apply to all infrastructure sectors. According to Callcut et al (2021), 'smart city' is a large-scale version of a DT that uses IoT technologies to link and map a city with its digital version. They further emphasise that a smart city must have people-centered technological breakthroughs that strive to recover well-being and take a complete approach that incorporates social, economic, and environmental factors through planning solutions.…”

“…Additionally, their analysis shows that DT use cases essentially fall into two categories based on a temporal scale: futures assessment (long-term); and operations management (short-term). It is quite established that it will be far more valuable to obtain insights for a shorter temporal scale because the insights will be more certain (Callcut et al, 2021). Hence, this study will focus on defining the uncertainty that surrounds large-scale DTs.…”

“…Next, we consider a classification into six UDT use case groups, namely, District-/City-Level Forecasting, Emergency Planning, Operational Optimisation, Participatory Planning, Policy Development, and Scenario Modelling. This classification has been adopted from the recent work of Callcut et al (2021). In Section 4, we list and describe the various use cases for DTs we considered for classification.…”

“…Further in this context, our research links DT technologies and existing DT applications for smart cities through a conceptual architecture for the development of UDTs (refer Section 4.7). Callcut et al (2021) investigate applications and usage of DTs for civil infrastructure systems (CISs) with current definitions and concepts. According to their findings, even though DTs are essentially comparative in various sectors, their application has generally been siloed inside sectors.…”

A Digital Twin of a Water Distribution System by Using Graph Convolutional Networks for Pump Speed-Based State Estimation

“…Moreover, in recent years, research in water networks has considered the possibility of implementing digital twins (DTs), a recent technique for modeling civil infrastructure systems [44]. In WDS, the implementation of DTs allows for the creation of hydraulic models that enable the development of the simulation of dynamic processes to improve the design of new infrastructures, reduce risk scenarios and optimize the management of the network and its elements [45]. In this case, new SE techniques, based on T-GCNs, contribute to the initial implementation of DTs in WDSs.…”