Transforming Data into Decision Making: A Spotlight Review of Construction Digital Twin

The importance of digital twin (DT) has been recognized by many industries throughout the world. In the context of construction, DT and relevant technologies have been implemented at different project stages. This study first clarifies the connotation of construction digital twin (CDT) and argues the subtle but important differences between CDT and BIM. Then, this study attempts to identify the recent research and development of CDT by reviewing 46 scholarly papers published in the past three years. The review reveals that: (1) nearly 70% of the reviewed studies focus on the operation and maintenance stage, and the most popular applications of CDT include energy management, facility operation and maintenance, and structural health monitoring; (2) not all studies present a complete CDT; and (3) the mechanisms to fuse different types of data for obtaining more credible decision-support information remain to be explored.