Ontology development for road digital twins: a base for a smart city

Objective: One of the important challenges that the construction industry faces is how to effectively manage data. Therefore, this research provides a base in the light of this societal problem by using Digital Twins for ontology-based information management with a view to reducing this growing concern. Material and Methods: Bibliometric search was employed to the Scopus database, for exploring and thereby identifying the key research areas and characterizing them through scientometric analysis and mapping. Subsequently, the ontology development process was carried out in all steps and the visualisation of the road digital twins ontology was developed with Neo4j. Results: Digital Twins with ontology-based approaches can contribute to a fully comprehensive and efficient data and information handling and management in the construction industry. The Road Digital Twins ontology may provide a structured framework for managing complex data which is considered to be important in smart city applications. Conclusion: The Road Digital Twins ontology has served as a semantic platform for Information Management. Future research can extend the ontology and integrate other existing ontologies.