Bridging the Gap: Integrating Building Information Models into Early-Lifecycle Digital Twins Using Semantic Information Containers

Digital twins (DT) have emerged as a viable tool for enhancing the integration of the digital and physical built environment, offering real-time prediction, optimization, and decision-making capabilities. To fully realise these opportunities from the outset, it is essential to integrate building information modelling (BIM) data into DTs to ensure a continuous flow of information during design and planning when real-time data from the physical asset are not yet available. This paper proposes a Linked Data-based approach to integrate distributed BIM datasets into the DT. It uses the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) as the DT framework and the Information Container for Linked Document Delivery (ICDD) to incorporate IFC-format building models, which are serialized as Linked Data to support semantic interoperability and connection to other ontologies and sources. The integration of ICDD and AAS is enabled through AAS’s RDF serialization and ontological structure, providing a streamlined, interoperable solution within the DT ecosystem.