Towards Resilient and Sustainable Rail and Road Networks: A Systematic Literature Review on Digital Twins

Abstract

The digital transformation of engineering assets has been receiving increased attention from the scientific community in the last few years. In this regard, Digital Twins (DTs) have been widely applied in the industry and are now reaching the civil infrastructures domain. At the same time, infrastructure managers face an increasing need to improve the sustainability and resilience of their assets. This paper aims firstly to map and present the current extent of DT application in rail and road networks, and secondly to perceive how these applications can contribute to increase their sustainability and resilience. To achieve this, the authors propose a systematic review on the DT literature related to rail and road infrastructure networks. The results show that the DT research in this domain is still scarce and that only a few use cases have attracted the attention of the scientific community. The results also indicate that most applications in rail and road networks focus on their operation and maintenance, and that there is a considerable unexplored potential for DT applications in this sector. More DT-related studies within this scope are expected to emerge in the coming years, and further research regarding its contribution to sustainability and resilience is needed.

Perspective Chapter: Roadmap to a Holistic Highway Digital Twin – A Why, How, and Why Framework

“…Similarly, the construction industry began considering Digital Twins a key enabler for its digital transformation that could improve the industry's poor record in digitization [14,21]. Moreover, the digital transformation of engineering assets increased the interest of both researchers and practitioners to investigate the implementation of the concept of Digital Twins in the civil infrastructure domain [22].…”

“…Also, they emphasized that it is critical to investigate how Digital Twins can be retrofitted into existing infrastructure systems to improve the efficiency of their operation and maintenance. More recently, the authors of [22] conducted a systematic literature review to map the applications of Digital Twins within the road and rail system, telecommunication, and electricity networks. This study showed that the available studies are scarce and that the use of Digital Twins is mainly perceived for the operation and maintenance phase.…”

Digital Twin Of Shipbuilding Process in Shipyard 4.0

“…Analyzing the progression of ongoing DT research, it can be observed that currently their interpretation is becoming increasingly differentiated. In a review of the literature, the authors [9] note that more and more diverse DT concepts are being developed. The main divergences concern the dilemma of whether DT is just a digital representation of a physical object or something more.…”

“…One can also encounter the approach that DT is a sort of technology [10,11]. The study [9] identified several leading approaches while showing their shortcomings. The need to unify nomenclature was shown as a basic conclusion.…”

“…The need to unify nomenclature was shown as a basic conclusion. Attention was also drawn to the increasing misuse of the name DT both among researchers and on the part of technology and software vendors and suppliers, who use this very popular term to describe their products and technologies [9,12]. Analyzing the available literature, one can see an increase in the popularity of the classification proposed in [13], where the authors defined three levels of digitalization of processes and objects: "digital model", "digital shadow" and "digital twin".…”