Understanding the Owner/Operator Perspective on Location-enabled Digital Twins for Operation & Maintenance in Transportation Infrastructure

Nowadays, infrastructure networks face numerous challenges that originate from the finite – but extensive - lifespan of infrastructure elements, the progressively reduced maintenance budget with the anticipation to provide better results and the environmental implications due to climate change. This puts a significant strain to the condition of the network with significant overrun operational expenditure attributed to poor maintenance of transportation infrastructure. Key in addressing the above challenges is more effective use of asset data and consequently the transition to lifecycle information models utilising the incremental progression of the technological advancements, such as O & M Digital Twin capabilities. However, literature suggests that asset data are not always fit for purpose and the lifecycle of the information from the stages of design and construction to handover and eventually asset management is fragmented, leading to ineffective use of data for decision-making. Additionally, the literature tends to focus on technical perspectives of the challenge, rather than seeking to explore the perspective of senior management - who are responsible for decisions around budgets, funding for data capture, curation and Twin development - on the problem. To address this gap, this paper presents the findings of semi-structured interviews with Subject Matter Experts from the Owner/Operator lens to capture and analyse their understanding of the importance of location-enabled data, and how and when information domains such as Geospatial and Building Information Modelling shall be integrated and utilised for long term asset management decision-making and progressive development of O & M location-enabled Digital Twins.