Digital twins applications in the water sector

Digital twins are becoming increasingly important in the civil infrastructure sector, as they can help to manage large and complex water networks more effectively. With the population growing and water demand increasing, digital twins can provide a valuable tool for developers and other stakeholders to ensure that infrastructure is designed and managed effectively. This paper reviews the current state of digital twins in the water sector, with a focus on their applications in water networks. It highlights the challenges and limitations of current DT technology and points to future research needs and directions. Several case studies are investigated in this research and compared to present a comprehensive view of the DT technology and its implementation advantages. The results of the literature review are summarized in this paper for the various applications of DTs in the water sector. The absence of data is one of the biggest obstacles to studying the employment of DTs in the water sector. This is because data has been not published by water utilities. However, a number of initiatives, such as the Global Omnium in Spain, Portsmouth Water and Anglian Water in the UK, and Halifax in Canada, are attempting to change this. The results of this research will be used for future work to integrate the digital twin modeling and simulation approaches in all applications in the water sector.