Developing a Federated Data Model for Built Environment Digital Twins

The Digital Twin (DT) concept is gaining momentum in managing the built environment as a powerful tool to support data-driven decision making. Different open Data Models (DM) can be found in the literature. Each DM addresses the scale and domain applications. However, many DT applications are still based on organization-specific information management processes and proprietary DM, which prevent using the data outside the particular environments. This paper aims to present the process and information management approaches adopted for developing a federated DM supporting the DT applications. The Information Delivery Manual (IDM) process modelling, has been applied adopting a cross-disciplinary and multi-scale methodology. The proposed approach is applied to the West Cambridge Campus Digital Twin research facility, identifying five main phases: Information Requirements (IR) definition, data schemes mapping, conceptual model definition, prototyping, testing and validation. An insight into the BIM-based IR definition, employing the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema is presented. Although additional testing and case studies are required for validation, the methods described in this paper are currently used to explore and develop DT applications at the building and built environment levels.