Advances in technology are already transforming the way the supply chain uses information at all stages of the construction process.
Digital engineering encompasses a vast and growing area of study, including everything from on-site automation and machine learning to exploring the use of computer vision, digital twins, or satellite data to monitor infrastructure.
In planning and designing Digital Twin Systems, the Centre is engaged in groundbreaking work on understanding and measuring the scope, feasibility, and costs of digital twins during the planning phase. It also sets the foundations for establishing the foundation data models, reference data libraries, and integration architectures consistent with the Information Management Framework proposed by the Centre for Digital Built Britain and the National Digital Twin Programme for the case of the strategic road network.
In constructing and maintaining Digital Twin Systems, the Centre has, from its beginning, pioneered several patented and highly cited methods for multi-modal (XYZ, RGB, NIR, T, GPR, GNSS, etc.) mobile scanning solutions able to capture raw data registered in space and time and estimate error in real-time for guiding its user. It has also been at the forefront of converting the raw data to information via detecting objects and their condition properties and enriching them with relationships into rich geometry models with very little manual support. In operating Digital Twin Systems, the Centre has a history of Augmented and Virtual Reality solutions for enabling better user immersion in the Digital Twins, and, more recently, in text and information mining tools with the help of natural language processing and large language models. This is supported by strong data science foundations that enable the modelling of processes and forensics and forecasting tools that bring out the value of digital twinning.
In collaboration with other colleagues, the Centre is also active in pioneering smart materials, automation, and robotics solutions that complement the above to enable the digital transformation of the construction sector. The abstracts below offer a glimpse of the current activity in this space. I invite you to read them and contact us for more information.
Details of the research undertaken across the work themes can be seen in the IT Showcase book of abstracts.
The progress and achievements of Digital Roads over the first year can be seen in the Digital Roads Annual Review 2023.
Browse the many Construction Engineering Masters dissertations on
