Exploring the Applications of Digital Twin Technology in Enhancing Sustainability in Civil Engineering: A Review

Abstract

With the advent of the big data era and the rise of Industrial Revolution 4.0, digital twins (DTs) have gained significant attention in various industries. DTs offer the opportunity to combine the physical and digital worlds and aid the digital transformation of the civil engineering industry. In this paper, 605 documents obtained from the search were first analysed using CiteSpace for literature visualisation, and an author co-occurrence network, a keyword co-occurrence network, and a keyword clustering set were obtained. Next, through a literature review of 86 papers, this paper summarises the current status of DT application in civil engineering based on a review of the origins, concepts, and implementation techniques of DTs, and it introduces the application of DTs in the full project lifecycle. This study shows that DTs have great potential to address many of the challenges faced by civil engineering. In this regard, the paper also presents some thoughts on the future directions of DT research.