Study on Digital Twin Technologies for Watershed Information Modeling (WIM): A Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Digital Twin (DT) concept has recently emerged in civil engineering; however, there are fewer applications in water conservancy and hydropower engineering, especially for smart integrated management at the watershed scale. Therefore, this study aims to gather relevant literature on the digital twin in the infrastructure domain and to review and analyse the key technologies and the current state of their integrated application from a pathway to implementation perspective. The review conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and Bibliometric-qualitative Analysis (BQA) to identify a developing base of digital twins for smart watersheds. The related research gaps were identified from the analysis regarding information integration, alignment of BIM + processes to constructor business processes and the effective governance and value of information. From this, a novel Watershed Information Modeling (WIM) research strategy utilizing a framework for BIM + and information governance coupled with knowledge-driven decision-making is outlined to further progress the smart watersheds.