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In recent years, the use of digital twins (DT) to improve maintenance procedures has increased in various industrial sectors (e.g., manufacturing, energy industry, aerospace) but is more limited in the construction industry. However, the operation and maintenance (O&M) phase of a building’s life cycle is the most expensive. Smart buildings already use BIM (Building Information Modeling) for facility management, but they lack the predictive capabilities of DT. On the other hand, the use of extended reality (XR) technologies to improve maintenance operations has been a major topic of academic research in recent years, both through data display and remote collaboration. In this context, this paper focuses on reviewing projects using a combination of these technologies to improve maintenance operations in smart buildings. This review uses a combination of at least three of the terms “Digital Twin”, “Maintenance”, “BIM” and “Extended Reality”. Results show how a BIM can be used to create a DT and how this DT use combined with XR technologies can improve maintenance operations in a smart building. This paper also highlights the challenges for the correct implementation of a BIM-based DT combined with XR devices. An example of use is also proposed using a diagram of the possible interactions between the user, the DT and the application framework during maintenance operations.

In the context of the Industry 4.0 and of the digital factory, digital twin and virtual reality represent key technologies to design, simulate and optimize cyber-physical production system and interact with it remotely or in a collaborative way. Moreover, these technologies open up new possibilities which can be involved in the co-design and ergonomics studies of workstations, based on Industry 4.0 components like cobots. In order to satisfy these needs and to create dynamic and immersive virtual environment, it is therefore necessary to combine the capacities of the digital twin to perform simulation of the production system with the capacities of the immersive virtual environment in term of interactions. This paper proposes a co-simulation and communication architecture between digital twin and virtual reality software, then it presents a use case on a human-robot collaborative workplace design and assessment.

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Maintenance of offshore wind turbines is a complex and costly undertaking which acts as a barrier to the development of this source of energy. Factors such as the size of the turbines, the size of the wind farms, their distance from the coast, meteorological conditions, etc. make it difficult for the stakeholders to select the optimal maintenance strategy. With the objective of reducing costs and duration of such operations it is important that new maintenance techniques are investigated. In this paper we propose a hybrid model of maintenance that is based on multi-agent systems, which allows for the modelling of systems with dynamic interactions between multiple parts. A multi-criteria decision algorithm has been developed to allow analysis and selection of different maintenance strategies. A cost model that includes maintenance action cost, energy loss and installation of monitoring system cost has been presented. For the purposes of this research we have developed a simulator using NetLogo software and have provided experimental results. The results show that employing the proposed hybrid maintenance strategy could increase wind farm productivity and reduce maintenance cost.