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Digital Twins in Construction, Engineering and Management
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Digital Twins in Construction, Engineering and Management

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction Management, and Computers & Digitization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 August 2026 | Viewed by 1291

Special Issue Editors

Dr. De-Graft Joe Opoku

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Engineering, Design & Built Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith 2747, Australia
Interests: digital twin; building information modelling; Internet of Things; sustainability; construction management
Dr. Robert Osei-Kyei

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Engineering, Design & Built Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith 2747, Australia
Interests: digital twin; sustainability; public–private partnership; project management; construction procurement
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Qiuchen Lu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, London WC1E 7HB, UK
Interests: digital twin; artificial intelligence; Internet of Things; cloud-based computing; data processing techniques
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Maxwell Fordjour Antwi-Afari

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
Interests: construction informatics; digital construction technologies and innovations; construction management and engineering; construction ergonomics; construction health and safety
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Digital twin is a technology that is making waves in all industries due to its ability to provide access to real-time data, status and future conditions, virtual representation of a physical asset, and linking both the physical and virtual domains.

Digital twin technology has the potential of making significant improvements in the construction, engineering and management industries as clearly established in other domains.

Although, current applications of digital twin in the construction, engineering and management industries are confronted with several challenges, its adequate implementation has enormous benefits. Thus, great attention has been geared towards, its application in the construction, engineering and management industries.

The aim of this Special Issue is to explore the application of digital twin in construction, engineering and management, specifically facilities management.

Potential topics for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Construction digital twins;
  • Digital twins for building projects;
  • Digital twins for infrastructure projects such as bridges, etc.;
  • City-level digital twins;
  • Digital twins for facility management;
  • Cost implications of digital twins;
  • Ethics in digital twins.

Dr. De-Graft Joe Opoku
Dr. Robert Osei-Kyei
Dr. Qiuchen Lu
Dr. Maxwell Fordjour Antwi-Afari
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • digital twin
  • facility management
  • buildings
  • infrastructure projects
  • building information modelling (BIM)
  • Internet of Things
  • artificial intelligence

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 6248 KB  
Article
Building Modeling Process Using Point Cloud Data and the Digital Twin Approach: An Industrial Case Study from Turkey
by Zeliha Hazal Kandemir and Özge Akboğa Kale
Buildings 2025, 15(24), 4469; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15244469 - 10 Dec 2025
Viewed by 325
Abstract
This study presents a terrestrial-laser-scanning-based scan-to-BIM workflow that transforms point cloud data into a BIM-based digital twin and analyzes how data collected with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) can be converted into an information-rich model using Autodesk ReCap and Revit. Point clouds provided [...] Read more.
This study presents a terrestrial-laser-scanning-based scan-to-BIM workflow that transforms point cloud data into a BIM-based digital twin and analyzes how data collected with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) can be converted into an information-rich model using Autodesk ReCap and Revit. Point clouds provided by laser scanning were processed in the ReCap environment and imported into Revit in an application that took place within an industrial facility of approximately 240 m2 in Izmir. The scans were registered and pre-processed in Autodesk ReCap 2022 and modeled in Autodesk Revit 2022, with visualization updates prepared in Autodesk Revit 2023. Geometric quality was evaluated using point-to-model distance checks, since the dataset was imported in a pre-registered form and ReCap did not provide station-level RMSE values. The findings indicate that the ReCap–Revit integration offers high geometric accuracy and visual detail for both building elements and production-line machinery, but that high data density and complex geometry limit processing performance and interactivity. The study highlights both the practical applicability and the current technical limitations of terrestrial-laser-scanning-based scan-to-BIM workflows in an industrial context, offering a replicable reference model for future digital twin implementations in Turkey. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Twins in Construction, Engineering and Management)
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15 pages, 1940 KB  
Article
Enabling Real-Time Mechanical Analysis in Digital Twin Systems: A Study on Multi-Source Heterogeneous Data Fusion via Midas Civil Integration
by Linhui Cao, Peng Hu, Maomao Chen, Zhanghong Liu, Guquan Song and Daosen Hong
Buildings 2025, 15(23), 4228; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15234228 - 23 Nov 2025
Viewed by 444
Abstract
The Digital Twin (DT) model within a Digital Twin System (DTS) serves as a real-time digital representation of its corresponding physical entity. It is a dynamic, interconnected model that enables real-time optimization in its application environment, allowing for the simulation, monitoring, evaluation, and [...] Read more.
The Digital Twin (DT) model within a Digital Twin System (DTS) serves as a real-time digital representation of its corresponding physical entity. It is a dynamic, interconnected model that enables real-time optimization in its application environment, allowing for the simulation, monitoring, evaluation, and control of the physical counterpart’s state and behavior while facilitating data-driven decision-making. In engineering practice, most scholars focus on data visualization and twin system construction. However, a complete digital twin system not only requires numerical representation of the real-time state of the physical entity but also sometimes requires real-time mechanical behavior analysis of the physical entity. Thus, a robust mechanical analysis module becomes essential within the DTS framework. Integrating a general-purpose mechanical analysis platform into the DTS offers an effective solution, thereby necessitating the development of novel fusion techniques for multi-source heterogeneous data. This study takes the integration of the Midas Civil mechanical analysis platform with a digital twin system as an example. By utilizing the API provided by Midas Civil, we develop a synchronization technique for virtual-physical systems, capable of handling and modeling multi-source heterogeneous data. This enables real-time mechanical computation and analysis within the DTS, facilitating the dynamic updating and aggregation of both simulation data from mechanical analysis and monitoring data from the physical entity. Consequently, the digital twin system can predict mechanical behaviors in the virtual domain, providing a more accurate representation of the real-world physical system’s state and dynamics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Twins in Construction, Engineering and Management)
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