Infrastructure Digital Twins' Big Value Arrives

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you have probably noticed that digital twins have become a hot topic across infrastructure sectors. What was once considered futuristic eye candy is now a powerful and valuable way to combine and leverage data from disparate sources and multiple disciplines. Sure, digital twins are particularly useful for visualisation, but their real power comes from combining timely, yet potentially siloed data for a holistic, virtual view of an infrastructure asset.
 
Whether in design, construction or asset operations, engineering firms and owner-operators are facing resource constraints. Project demand is outpacing the number of people available to do the work, driving the sectors to transform and change how work gets done. Adopting digital twin-powered workflows can boost productivity, increase throughput and deliver better results. Infrastructure digital twins are becoming critical enablers of the design, construction and operation of assets.
 
Digital twin-powered workflows enable firms to seamlessly conduct design reviews and structural analysis, calculate carbon footprints and quantity take-offs, and plan construction schedules, all based on a single, up-to-date, data-rich digital twin. An infrastructure digital twin is a structured way to federate information from various systems. In addition to bringing siloed data together, a digital twin can unlock data from existing design files, essentially “lighting up dark data”. This unlocked data is the foundation for quickly and easily applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive actionable insights and better outcomes.


​Source: PBC Today