State-of-the-Practice of Digital Twin Implementation in the Utility Sector

The utility sector has historically been challenged with poor information on subsurface utilities, leading to problems such as utility strikes, subsequent delays, and cost overruns. Emerging technologies such as a digital twin (DT) are being proposed to better capture subsurface utility data to minimize some of these problems. This study reviews the state of the practice of DT in the utility sector to pave the way for future research direction. The study involved selecting and critically reviewing relevant papers in two databases. The review's outcome shows that DT adoption in the utility sector is still nascent, and more academic research is needed for significant advancement. It was also observed that the most advanced implementation of DT can be found in the water sector, while other utilities only implemented geometric DTs. Also, the problem of accurately locating existing subsurface facilities for easy maintenance or upgrade continues to linger.