Scan-to-BIM Information Foundations and a Digital Twin Architecture for the Urban Tiber River Corridor in Rome

Digital Twins (DTs) are increasingly proposed as decision-support environments for complex urban and infrastructural systems, yet documented applications to urban river corridors remain limited. This paper applies a DT methodology, developed within the Agenzia del Demanio guidelines prepared by CITERA, to the urban stretch of the Tiber River in Rome. The case study covers approximately 8 km of the urban stretch between Ponte Milvio and the Tiber Island, with detailed survey and documentation concentrated on the sixteen bridges and the adjoining banks between Ponte della Musica and Ponte Palatino and was carried out within an AUBAC-CITERA research agreement. Three objectives were adopted: condition-based maintenance of riverbed and bank hydraulic works, hydraulic-risk monitoring, and hydro-pluviometric monitoring in support of flood-risk and water-governance decisions. The application produced high-resolution point clouds, Scan-to-BIM information models of the sixteen bridges exported in IFC 4.3, geospatial contextualisation in Autodesk InfraWorks, and a target architecture for federation with AUBAC's WebGIS environment and future monitoring flows. Sensor deployment, continuous data flows, machine-learning components, dashboard operation and indicator validation remain planned and not yet operational. The system should therefore be understood as a digital model and target DT architecture prepared for evolution towards a digital shadow and, subsequently, an operational Digital Twin. The contribution lies in documenting how a pre-existing methodology performs in a complex institutional urban-river context, what information assets it yields, and which implementation constraints must be addressed before an operational DT can be claimed.