Digital Twin for Underground Stations: Improving Decision Making for Construction Lifecycle

Challenges in the extraction and use of earth resources and spaces are encountered given a growing worldwide population, rising infrastructures development, and widespread climate change. In Australia, mining and construction are two major bases for economic growth while both being traditional hazardous and heavy industries. A nation-wide infrastructure upgrade featuring large-scale underground development is underway, the geological uncertainties and localisation difficulties of already laid infrastructure are associated with challenges not seen in building construction. A safer and competent subterranean transport solution is yet proposed in the context of sustainable developments. In light of this, geotechnical analysis as a fundamental subject for developing and maintaining safe and sustainable use of underground space has huge potential to be undertaken more intuitively considering the advancements in information management and visualisation. The PhD work examines the state-of-the-art applications, limitations and future opportunities of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and other computational techniques in the digitisation of tunnelling and underground construction. The visualisation and interoperability facilitated by data-driven processes are especially important to underground construction that engages interdisciplinary and multi-environment interaction.