Digital twins (DT) describe the integration of the physical and digital worlds with the aim of optimizing real world operations and functions. The digital twin concept has gained increasing attention across industries in the past decade including the building sector. However digital twins remain ambiguous with various existing definitions and characteristics. While DTs include all life cycle phases, ultimately their goal is optimization of operations during the use phase. Of the building life cycle phases, building facilities management (FM) is responsible for considerable costs and energy consumption and has potential for improvement through DT implementation. Along with increased building information modeling (BIM) implementation, recent advances in data driven technologies have encouraged the exploration of DT in the building sector. BIM has been coupled with technologies such as internet of things (IoT), data analytics, and cloud computing to optimize various FM functions often resembling DT. This study has reviewed existing literature on digital twins in facilities management using a structured literature review and characterized similar characteristics and definitions by different authors. Additionally, DT implementation in different FM application areas was quantified and analyzed. Results show that DT implementation in FM is still at nascent stages with major challenges surrounding standardization and data integration. / Master of Science / Digital twins (DT) describe the integration of the physical and digital worlds with the aim of optimizing real world operations and functions. The digital twin concept has gained increasing attention across industries in the past decade including the building sector. However digital twins remain ambiguous with various existing definitions and characteristics. DTs include all building life cycle phases from design, construction, to operation and maintenance. Ultimately their goal is optimization of operations also referred to as facilities management during the use phase. Of the building life cycle phases, building facilities management (FM) is responsible for considerable costs and energy consumption and has potential for improvement through DT implementation. Building information modeling (BIM) describes geometric and semantic information of physical assets and has been used to optimize operations in FM. Along with increased BIM implementation, recent advances in data driven technologies have encouraged the exploration of DT in the building sector. BIM has been coupled with technologies such as internet of things (IoT), data analytics, and cloud computing to optimize various FM functions often resembling DT.
This study has reviewed existing literature on digital twins in facilities management using a structured literature review and characterized similar characteristics and definitions by different authors. Additionally, DT implementation in different FM application areas was quantified and analyzed. Results show that DT implementation in FM is still at nascent stages with major challenges surrounding standardization and data integration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/113578 |
| Date | 30 January 2023 |
| Creators | Kinani, Toufa |
| Contributors | Civil and Environmental Engineering, Jazizadeh Karimi, Farrokh, Sarlo, Rodrigo, Iorio, Josh |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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