BIM, Digital Twin and Cyber-Physical Systems: crossing and blurring boundaries

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews the concepts of Digital Twin, BIM, and Cyber-Physical Systems to clarify their similarities and differences, aiming to advance understanding in construction and the built environment.

Contribution

It provides a structured comparison of Digital Twin, BIM, and CPS, addressing a debate mainly discussed informally and fostering clearer conceptual boundaries.

Findings

Digital Twin integrates diverse data for real-time asset insights.

BIM primarily focuses on building data modeling and management.

CPS emphasizes the integration of physical processes with computational systems.

Abstract

Digital Twin in construction and the built environment have started to attract the attention of researchers and practitioners in recent times. Its anticipated value proposition is focussed on its capability of generating new understanding and insights into an asset at all stages of its life cycle, exploiting diverse data sets from a multitude of sources and professions, in real or near real-time. However, there is still a significant debate about the delineation (i.e. communalities and differences) between digital twin and other related concepts, particularly Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). To date, this debate has been confined to social media discussions, insights blogs and position papers. This paper addresses this challenge using a systematic review. The aim is to investigate communalities and differences between the three concepts, Digital Twin, BIM and CPS. The results of this paper are expected to foster the discussion around this theme within construction and the built environment.