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Record W4414805269 · doi:10.1016/j.jobe.2025.114214

Data-driven and physics-based modeling approaches and their integration in building digital twins: A systematic review

2025· article· en· W4414805269 on OpenAlex
Jifar M. Hunde, Tesfatsyon S. Ochono, Damitha Senevirathne, Dagimawi D. Eneyew, Girma Bitsuamlak, Miriam A. M. Capretz, Katarina Grolinger

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
fundA Canadian funder is recorded on the work.

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Building Engineering · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicDigital Transformation in Industry
Canadian institutionsWestern University
FundersEnvironment and Climate Change CanadaWestern University
KeywordsInterpretabilityGeneralizability theoryKey (lock)Domain (mathematical analysis)Transformation (genetics)Data integrationScalabilityReplica

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Interest in digital twin technology has grown significantly within the building sector as part of the broader digital transformation in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. A building digital twin is a virtual replica that captures a building’s static and dynamic behavior through data, information, and models. Digital twin models can be developed using data-driven or physics-based approaches, each with distinct advantages and limitations. Data-driven models can learn complex behaviors from data and scale well, but they require large datasets and often lack interpretability. In contrast, physics-based models offer interpretability and generalizability through fundamental principles but can be computationally demanding. Consequently, building digital twins can benefit greatly from integrating both approaches through hybrid modeling. However, the literature lacks a comprehensive analysis of integration strategies within building digital twins. This study addresses that gap by reviewing advances in data-driven and physics-based modeling and analyzing various integration levels. The results show that most studies rely on siloed models, using either approach independently without leveraging their complementary strengths. Some adopted sequential integration, where one model informs the other but lacks real-time or iterative feedback. A few achieved coupled integration, involving active data exchange and collaboration between models. Only three studies explored fusion integration, where both approaches are fully unified into a single model. Based on this review, a method is proposed for selecting the appropriate level of integration, considering factors such as data availability, interpretability, generalizability, and domain knowledge. Finally, key research gaps and future directions are identified to guide further work. • Reviews data-driven and physics-based modeling approaches in building DTs. • Examines varying levels of integration between data-driven and physics-based models. • Discusses the key trade-offs for each modeling approach and integration level. • Presents guidelines for selecting the appropriate integration level. • Identifies key research gaps to direct future research efforts.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: Simulation or modeling
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.925
Threshold uncertainty score0.607

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.001
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.041
GPT teacher head0.245
Teacher spread0.204 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it