Workshop Objectives

In 2017, the United Kingdom (UK) National Infrastructure Commission launched a national digital twin initiative as envisioned in their Data for the Public Good report. During the evolution of their digital twin initiative, the UK construction industry alone saved $1.1 billion in 2014 just by sharing information. Since 2018, the concept and development of digital twins have been significantly advanced worldwide, as demonstrated by an increase in publications (mentioned “digital twin” in their titles) to over 10,000. In the U.S., digital twin initiatives have gained increasing interests in recent years. They have been initiated by federal agencies such as National Science Foundation 24-559 on Mathematical
Foundations of Digital Twins, Department of Commerce Digital Twin and Semiconductor CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute, and Department of Energy Digital Twin for Hydropower Systems Project. The Department of Energy also organized a joint DOE-NSF Workshop on Digital Twins for Manufacturing on November 11-14, 2024.

Currently, there is an urgent need to take a more proactive approach to create a synergistic and cohesive effort in the U.S. and drive national digital twin technologies in the built environment. A built environment is referred to as engineered structures (e.g., airports, bridges, buildings, dams, ports, roads), man-made features (e.g., community center squares, landscapes, monuments, parks, recreations), and facilities (fire stations, hospitals, power plants, schools, waste water treatments) viewed collectively as an environment in which people live and work.

As such, a multidimensional digital twin in the built environment in city or regional scales can address multiple models, functions, and values to justify its capital investment. Such a large- scale initiative surely requires the integrated use of physics-based and data-driven methods, such as computational and experimental mechanics, machine learning, geospatial computing, virtual/augmented reality, and quantum computing. As an example of modeling in the built environment, building and civil infrastructure assets have been managed using databases since 1970 and with the aid of Building Information Modeling (BIM) since 1992 for value engineering and as-built information.

The imperative for embracing digital twinning becomes evident in the aftermath of the 2007 Minneapolis Interstate 35W Bridge Collapse, a catastrophic event that claimed 13 lives and injured 145. This tragic incident underscores deficiencies not only in extracting overlooked design information from BIM but also in the incapacity of BIM alone to assess the design capacity of bridge members. The urgency to adopt multidimensional digital twins to support informational, computational, and behavioral modeling is amplified as our nation’s infrastructure is aging, requiring more frequent condition assessment and maintenance, particularly in the face of accelerating climate changes and increasing natural disasters. To capitalize national and international interests and opportunities, we will organize a U.S. workshop with the following specific objectives:

1.  To brainstorm and develop a research and development (R&D) roadmap for community- driven national digital twin initiatives in the built environment, which will potentially advance and improve infrastructure engineering, living environments, and emergency responses.
2. To harness the interest and opportunity in the U.S. to explore frontier research and innovation using digital twins as a platform to drive economic development, citizens’ well-being, environmental sustainability, and infrastructure resiliency.

Participants will be invited from academic, industry, and governmental organizations. The total number of participants will be capped by 50 to ensure that this workshop will be run both efficiently and effectively to deliver a R&D roadmap. The participants will be divided into six thematic working groups. Each group will have 8-10 participants to ensure fully engaged group discussions. A pre-assigned group leader and a pre-assigned scribe will be responsible for group summary report and presentation to the entire workshop. At the general assembly of the workshop, real-time polls will be conducted to get the overall support of workshop attendees on various initiatives in the R&D roadmap. The working groups will be organized based on six layers in the architecture of a typical digital twin (DT). The six layers are Data Acquisition, Data Transmission, Model Analysis, Feature
Mapping, Users Collaboration, and Policy and Impact. Together, they support both creation and application of a DT in an autonomous region/society. Their key functions are illustrated in the following