What is a Digital Twin?

Let us start by saying something, whatever it is, we don’t want to limit the scope of a Digital Twin. We prefer to think about Today’s version of a Digital Twin, since we are convinced that their nature is evolutionary. In the context of AECO, we can try to shape a definition of a Digital Twin as a virtual representation of an asset that is continually updated with the best possible information gathered from the real world, thus enabling better-informed decision-making processes. The answer to the question of who are the end-users of these Digital Twins shape profoundly the Digital Twin itself!!!

In the context of AECO, such information construct is an interactive version of a Building Information Model (BIM) with a timely, active connection between the virtual and the physical realms through continual and dynamic data exchange. Connecting information to this unique Digital Twin takes multiple forms. Ranging from time streams to point clouds or different kinds of simulations, there is a huge challenge in a sector. How a centrilized environment can meaningfully host and make use of such variety of information.

A seamless operation and interaction between diverse data sources, methodologies and software is required. MatchFEM helps to integrate BIM, Planning and Scheduling, data collected from the site, Internet of Things (IoT) and Structural Analysis within the same parametric environment without jumping between applications.

Towards its use in AECO

In the sector, digitization has improved tasks completion, communications, processes, data utilization, and decision-making, resulting in improved building and city management, logistics and mobility. When it comes to building design and construction, efforts primarily focus on implementing, expanding and enhancing the BIM methodology. BIM has standardized the geometrical environment and the exchange of information among stakeholders. For decades, BIM has been present as a consensual solution to optimize workflows for the development of design and construction projects.

Notwithstanding, the number of technological layers that can be added is expanding and thus, the BIM roadmap faces new challenges to fit into a broader interconnected context and to deliver smarter construction services. Enabling BIM with data streams from the physical world, represents the spark of a transformation between static models and a continuously updated living digital asset based on existing descriptions of the built environment.

Digital Twins, understood as virtual assets that connect the real and virtual realms synchronously, inherit this potential. Digital Twins can be developed in a way they extend the practical applications of current BIM models by consistently harnessing up-to-date construction site data and eventually, keep track of operation and maintenance.