D7.8 – Construction Digital Twin 3D Visualisation Module v2
Creators: name: Vassiliadis, Michalis
name: Tsalis, Christos
name: Papafragkakis, Apostolos
name: Giannakis, Giorgos
name: Kakarantzas, Pavlos
name: Papapolyzos, Ntinos
name: Fotopoulou, Anastasia
name: Charbi, Theofania
name: Lilis, Georgios
name: Katsigarakis, Kyriakos
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022

description: Construction sites constitute a very dynamic, highly evolving environment; one of the primary goals of the COGITO ecosystem is to allow all involved stakeholders to remain up-to-date – even while off-site, in terms of work progress, construction quality and potential safety issues. On that account, a Construction Digital Twin 3D Visualisation module is implemented, hereafter termed Digital Command Centre or DCC; the purpose of this document is to report on this work, performed as part of tasks T7.3 and mainly T7.4.

DCC is a 3D visualisation module which makes use of the data stored in the COGITO Digital Twin Platform to create an intuitive graphical representation of a construction site Digital Twin. It is based on the popular 3D game engine Unity and utilises other work done in parallel within T7.3 and T7.4, namely the development of a 3D BIM COGITO Unity library and an IFCtoMesh generator service. Due to its web-based nature, DCC allows the end-users to gain a remote - yet detailed - view of the construction site, regardless of device or operating system. More particularly, it allows a detailed view of the as-planned 4D data, i.e., the geometrical representation filtered by the work execution time schedule, as well as the as-built data, i.e., the geometry of what has actually been constructed/implemented in a particular time frame. Making use of other COGITO components, it allows the user to enable overlays reporting on the accomplished work progress, potential health and safety issues or hazards, the quality of the work performed and location/IoT data. It should be noted that there is no business logic involved in the execution of the application; it merely handles the rendering/visualisation of the various components/entities, i.e., new data is not generated or transformed throughout DCC. The latter is addressed by the DTP and its inter-connected tools (i.e., the WODM, QC, H&S and IoT modules).

In this report, the module’s architecture is illustrated, including details on the technology stack/implementation tools used. Considering that DCC is a GUI-based visualisation tool, a thorough, step-by-step walkthrough of the user interactions is presented; for each interaction, a relevant application snapshot is provided. To ensure that both the stakeholder and the functional/non-functional requirements as defined in deliverables D2.1, D2.4 and D2.5 are addressed, a corresponding section is added; any assumptions and restrictions are also highlighted. This document builds on top of deliverable D7.7 to report on the efforts carried out since the former’s release; emphasis is placed on the DCC’s newly added features and functionality by means of actual walkthrough examples. As mentioned in the conclusions, this second iteration of the DCC application shall meet all the functional and non-functional requirements as set out in the relevant deliverables. Nevertheless, DCC is expected to become fully interoperable with the COGITO platform during task T8.1, when all inter-related tools are also expected to have reached their final version. As such, minor changes, adaptations or rework might be necessary before the component’s final release. 

It should be stressed that in order to gain a better insight on the inner workings of this module, it is strongly recommended that this deliverable is evaluated in tandem with deliverable D7.6 Data Transformation for 3D BIM Rendering v2.