Digital Twins to Monitor Physical Resources at Construction Sites with Web Application

The Construction 4.0 term represents an attempt to adapt Industry 4.0 for civil construction, using advanced technologies to overcome the specific problems of this sector. The evolution of the digital ecosystems based on Building Information Modeling (BIM) makes possible the creation of Digital Twins from physical building environments. These Digital Twins can monitor physical resources (materials, equipment, and personnel) at the construction site and can be incorporated into the Construction Management to support decision-making. For that, appropriate auxiliary tools must be used for data capture, storage, and visualization. This study aims to present a framework and an application of Digital Twins to monitor physical resources in construction sites and display the information in real-time, focusing on the approach of the technologies involved. The object of study is the metallic formworks for concrete walls constructive systems. The methodology used is experimental research. The Digital Twin is created with the digital ecosystem of Forge, based on a model first generated in Revit. On-site data collection takes place using a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system. The collected information is stored in Firebase, which is a non-relational database with real-time Cloud synchronization. A Web application allows the visualization of the three-dimensional model generated in Forge, as well as the generation of reports for monitoring and dashboards to display the collected information. The main result of the study is the Digital Twin that integrates a derived BIM model, a non-relational database, an RFID system, and the Web application to meet the proposed objective.