Digital Twin (DT) technologies have demonstrated a positive impact across various stages of the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. Nevertheless, the industry has been slow to undergo digital transformation. The paper utilizes the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach to study a total of 842 papers on the application of DT in buildings, landscapes, and urban environments (BLU) from 2018 to 2024. Based on the research results, suggestions have been made for future research and practical directions. Meanwhile, it provides assistance to BLU’s designers, constructors, managers, and policymakers in establishing their understanding of the digital transformation of the AEC industry. The existing relevant research can be mainly divided into three categories: case study, framework study, and technology study. Compared with the buildings and urban environment industries, the number and depth of research in the landscape industry are relatively low. Through in-depth analysis of BLU projects, three research trends in the future are determined: (1) research and application of DT framework in the design and planning stage; (2) development of design tools and basic theory based on DT model; (3) application and exploration of DT technology in the landscape industry.

The indoor geometric dimensions of a building are crucial for acceptance criteria. Traditional manual methods for measuring indoor geometric quality are labor-intensive, time-consuming, error-prone, and yield non-reproducible results. With the advancement of ground-based laser scanning technology, the efficient and precise measurement of geometric dimensions has become achievable. An indoor geometric quality measurement method based on ground-based laser scanning is presented in this paper. Initially, a coordinate transformation algorithm based on selected points was developed for conducting coordinate conversion. Subsequently, the Cube Diagonal-based Denoising algorithm, developed for point cloud denoising, was employed. Following that, architectural components such as walls, ceilings, floors, and openings were identified and extracted based on their spatial relationships. The measurement and visualization of the geometric quality of walls’ flatness, verticality, and opening dimensions were automated using fitting and simulation methods. Lastly, tests and validation were conducted to assess the accuracy and applicability of the proposed method. The experimental results demonstrate that time and human resources can be significantly saved using this method. The accuracy of this method in assessing wall flatness, verticality, and opening dimensions is 77.8%, 88.9%, and 95.9%, respectively. These results indicate that indoor geometric quality can be detected more accurately and efficiently compared to traditional inspection methods using the proposed method.

Prefabricated steel box girders (SBGs) are widely adopted in bridge engineering due to their light weight and low lifecycle cost. To smoothly assemble SBG components on a construction site, it is necessary to inspect their geometric quality and ensure that all the as-is SBG components have the correct dimensions. However, the traditional inspection method is time-consuming and error-prone. This study developed a non-contact geometric quality assessment technique based on 3D laser scanning to accurately assess the locations and dimensions of SBG components. First, a robust normal-based region-growing algorithm was developed to divide the SBG components into segments with different labels. The scanned data related to the T ribs were then extracted through the proposed subtraction algorithm after the identification of the steel cabin. Lastly, the required items for geometric quality inspection were calculated based on the extracted as-is SBG components. The feasibility of the proposed geometric quality assessment method was validated through a real SBG project. Field test results showed that the developed inspection technique could assess the geometric quality of prefabricated SBG components in a more accurate and efficient manner compared to traditional measurement approaches.