What is a Digital Twin anyway? Deriving the definition for the built environment from over 15,000 scientific publications

The concept of Digital Twins (DT) has attracted significant attention across various domains, particularly within the built environment. However, there is a sheer volume of definitions and the terminological consensus remains out of reach. The lack of a universally accepted definition leads to ambiguities in their conceptualization and implementation, and may cause miscommunication for both researchers and practitioners. We employed Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to systematically extract and analyze definitions of DTs from a corpus of more than 15,000 full-text articles spanning diverse disciplines. The study compares these findings with insights from an expert survey that included 52 experts.…

• NU
  National University of Singapore
• NR
  National Research Foundation Singapore

  Award: A-8001957-00-00
• DO
  Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India
• MO
  Ministry of Education - Singapore

  Award: R-295-000-171-133
• ET
  Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
• DO
  Department of Science and Technology, Philippines
• CO
  College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore