Use of digital methods to realize a digital twin of bridges

Digitalization can make an important contribution to overcome the challenges of ageing infrastructure and the shortage of skilled workers by increasing efficiency. The aim is to create a digital twin of the transportation infrastructure that makes construction management more efficient at both technical and administrative levels. Structural health monitoring is carried out by recording physical changes using sensors and transferring them to the digital model, which enables the causes to be analyzed directly. Digital methods such as BIM and ontologies are used to achieve these goals. Ontologies are machine-interpretable models that combine building information and underlying expert knowledge, thus enabling more efficient administration. BIM enables the linking of semantic, alphanumeric and geometric information. The bidirectional exchange of information between real bridges and the digital model represents the core of the digital twin. However, this has so far only been partially implemented in a small number of projects, which is why a look at the different approaches with their advantages and disadvantages as well as the associated challenges is useful. In addition, a procedure is presented that can be used as a template for the creation of central subsystems of digital twins of bridges based on Structural Health Monitoring and Ontologies.