Digital Twin-Enabled Laboratory Asset Management for Smart Campus Applications

Technical laboratories play an important role in engineering education; however, managing laboratory equipment commonly relies on fragmented, manual processes that make information difficult to locate, access and maintain. This study develops and assesses a BIM-based DT framework for the spatial representation, documentation, and information accessibility developed for a surveying equipment store asset at UniSQ. The proposed framework integrates reality capture and digital modelling technologies through a workflow involving mobile laser scanning and UAV-based LiDAR data, point-cloud processing, BIM development, asset information integration, and cloud-based DT implementation. The surveying equipment store was represented within a reconstructed BIM model of F Block, with equipment records and supporting documentation linked to modelled storage cabinets and shelves. The implementation linked information for 28 surveying equipment items across five equipment types to their modelled storage locations. A cloud-to-mesh comparison of the F Block BIM, including the surveying store interior (floor and roof excluded), with the noise-filtered mobile laser scanning (MLS) point cloud (16,131,551 points) gave a mean absolute deviation of 40.2 mm (SD 22.1 mm; RMSE 45.9 mm), with approximately 63% of points within 50 mm. The developed DT provides a centralised spatial interface for identifying equipment storage locations and accessing associated asset information. The assessment focused on technical implementation and functional capabilities; no user evaluation was conducted. Future studies will evaluate usability and information-retrieval performance with students, staff, and technical officers. The study contributes an application-focused framework that links laboratory equipment information and management workflows to a spatial BIM-based environment using storage-level asset representation, providing a foundation for future real-time asset tracking and monitoring.