This month Rebecca De Cicco was guest editor of the Futurebuild newsletter. She focused on the development of the Digital Twin, looking at how the construction industry is embracing the use and methodologies surrounding its creation.

Rebecca shared her views on how the Digital Twin is very much a new term for many in the construction industry, but across other industries the term has been used for some time.

The beginning of the term ‘Digital Twin’ was coined as far back as the 1990s, when work was undertaken at Yale University to develop and support something called ‘mirror worlds’ – or the relationship between the physical and digital worlds.

Industries which have been working relentlessly to support these processes are obviously those who adopted innovative approaches to the way they designed, maintained and used their assets. Industries such as aerospace, aviation and manufacturing are some of those examples, where having digital replicas or mirrors of elements allowed for greater design, accessibility and even safety for those who worked in these fields.

You can read Rebecca’s full article on creating a mirror of the world through a Digital Twin on the Futurebuild website.