Digital Twin in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industry: A Bibliometric Review
Manea Almatared, Hexu Liu, Shengxian Tang, Mohammed Sulaiman, Zhen Lei, Hong Li
Abstract
The architecture, engineering, and construction industry (AEC) is embracing digitization in the design, construction, and operation of built assets with the growing prominence of information technologies, such as building information modeling (BIM), internet of things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI). In this context, plenty of research efforts have been dedicated to digital twin (DT) applications. This research synthesizes state-of-art on DT in the AEC industry through bibliometric analysis, aiming to identify the research trends, challenges, and knowledge gaps in this growing area. A total of 75 publications regarding DT was identified and retrieved from Scopus. Then, VOSviewer was used for bibliometric analysis, including (1) keyword co-occurrence, and (2) citation analysis of selected publications. The identified research clusters and most-cited publications were discussed to clarify research trends and future needs. The findings revealed that future research should be directed to (1) data interoperability, (2) AIoT, and (3) AI. Moreover, extra research efforts should also be given to the DT applications during the design and construction phases of construction projects. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by quantitatively exposing research trends and needs for DT in the AEC industry.