Digital Twin Practice for Long Linear Engineering Management: A Case Study of Nantong Ring Expressway

Large-scale long linear engineering (LLE) projects have the characteristics of difficult coordination, challenging progress control, frequent changes, extensive archives, and difficult transfer. Engineering management (EM) faces many highly complex and fragmented information problems, making the need for digitalization even more urgent. This article proposes a DT model suitable for the management of LLE such as highways. By using long-endurance and high-precision UAV oblique photography technology combined with BIM, GIS, and IoT technology integration to build DT space, the project management digitalization based on DT was realized in the Nantong Ring Expressway project. The practical results show that: 1. DT-based engineering project management can achieve autonomous identification and warning of project progress, as well as automatic quantity calculation, improving the efficiency of project management; 2. DTs have improved the refinement, standardization, and real-time level of engineering project management while achieving the value regeneration of digital assets for highways. Finally, this article summarizes the problems and practical experience faced by DTs in engineering project management.