A Distributed Twin System for Managing Asset-Process Interactions in Highway Infrastructure Systems

15 pages•Published: August 28, 2025

Mengtian Yin, Tom Kelly, Pieter Pauwels, Liming Xu, Brian Sheil, Junxiang Zhu, Yue Xie and Ioannis Brilakis

Abstract

Highway agencies face challenges managing scattered asset data across maintenance processes and information systems, obstructing efficient retrieval of dynamic cross-system road information for timely interventions. This paper presents a Digital Twin (DT)-based data federation framework to effectively manage fragmented systems and dispersed data for highway infrastructure operation and maintenance. The framework middleware can decompose users’ queries and requests from different subsystems based on a metadata database and a distributed system architecture. The connected data ecosystem enables dynamic communication between different asset systems, ensuring efficient maintenance planning and process coordination between different users and teams. The presented framework is demonstrated based on datasets and synthesised systems conforming to asset management practices adopted by United Kingdom (UK) National Highways.

Keyphrases: digital twins, distributed systems, highway maintenance, information management, process optimisation

In: Jack Cheng and Yu Yantao (editors). Proceedings of The Sixth International Conference on Civil and Building Engineering Informatics, vol 22, pages 1043-1057.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/cGb7
	https://doi.org/10.29007/tdx1

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{ICCBEI2025:Distributed_Twin_System_Managing,
  author    = {Mengtian Yin and Tom Kelly and Pieter Pauwels and Liming Xu and Brian Sheil and Junxiang Zhu and Yue Xie and Ioannis Brilakis},
  title     = {A Distributed Twin System for Managing Asset-Process Interactions in Highway Infrastructure Systems},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of The Sixth International Conference on Civil and Building Engineering Informatics},
  editor    = {Jack Cheng and Yu Yantao},
  series    = {Kalpa Publications in Computing},
  volume    = {22},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2515-1762},
  url       = {/publications/paper/cGb7},
  doi       = {10.29007/tdx1},
  pages     = {1043-1057},
  year      = {2025}}

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