Digital Twins Across the Asset Lifecycle: Technical, Organisational, Economic, and Regulatory Challenges
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Authors
Dong, K
Moshood, TD
Supervisor
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Journal Article
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MDPI AG
Abstract
The construction industry faces persistent challenges in productivity, efficiency, and sustainability. Digital twin (DT) technology has emerged as a promising pathway for lifecycle optimisation, yet its construction adoption remains limited. Key barriers include fragmentation across project phases, weak data continuity at handover, and conceptual ambiguity between DT and Building Information Modelling (BIM). This systematic literature review analyses 160 peer-reviewed studies (2018–2026) selected from 463 Scopus records using a PRISMA-guided process and inter-rater reliability testing (Cohen’s κ = 0.83). The review clarifies that DTs extend beyond BIM in three ways: they enable bidirectional, automated physical-digital data exchange; integrate heterogeneous real-time sources such as IoT sensors and operational systems; and maintain lifecycle continuity from design through to end-of-life. Select advanced implementations report notable performance gains. These include rework and logistics reductions of up to 80%, cost savings of approximately 5%, schedule acceleration of around two months, energy reductions of 15–30%, and maintenance cost reductions of 10–25%. These figures reflect case-level outcomes from high-performing pilots and should not be read as typical industry benchmarks. Broader adoption remains constrained by interoperability gaps, data quality challenges, digital maturity deficits, misaligned stakeholder incentives, and paper-based regulatory environments. DTs represent a socio-technical transformation, not a standalone technology upgrade. Realising their potential requires coordinated progress in standards development, governance frameworks, collaborative delivery models, and workforce capability. Future research should focus on scalable interoperability, longitudinal lifecycle value validation, human-centred adoption strategies, and sustainability assessment methods to support evidence-based diffusion of DTs in the built environment.Description
Keywords
4005 Civil Engineering, 40 Engineering, 33 Built Environment and Design, 3302 Building, 1201 Architecture, 1202 Building, 1203 Design Practice and Management, 3301 Architecture, 3302 Building, 4005 Civil engineering
Source
Buildings, ISSN: 2075-5309 (Print); 2075-5309 (Online), MDPI AG, 16(5), 1084-1084. doi: 10.3390/buildings16051084
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© 2026 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.