Digital twins for health and safety management in construction: a systematic review
Hayford Pittri, Godawatte Arachchige Gimhan Rathnagee Godawatte, Benjamin Botchway, Benjamin Baah, Burcu Salgin, Kofi AgyekumPurpose
Despite regulatory and technological advances, construction health and safety (H&S) management remains hindered by poor hazard visibility, fragmented information and reactive decision-making. Digital twins (DTs) offer a proactive, integrated and data-driven approach by connecting physical construction environments with continuously updated virtual representations. However, evidence remains fragmented regarding how DT applications, enabling conditions and implementation challenges interact to improve H&S outcomes. This study aims to systematically review and synthesise evidence on DT-enabled H&S management during the construction stage.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic literature review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, identifying 26 peer-reviewed journal articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Bibliometric analysis and qualitative content synthesis were used to examine research trends, DT applications, implementation enablers, challenges and future research directions.
Findings
DTs are mainly applied to workforce monitoring, hazard detection, safety training, risk prediction and decision support. Implementation success relies on technological, organisational, human and institutional enablers, but is hindered by interoperability issues, data governance gaps, skill shortages, high costs and regulatory ambiguity. Current research remains technology-oriented, underemphasising socio-technical integration, governance and scale-up.
Originality/value
This study develops an integrated, context-sensitive socio-technical framework, grounded in socio-technical systems theory and the technology–organisation–environment framework, explaining how technological capabilities, organisational readiness and governance conditions collectively shape DT-enabled H&S outcomes. The framework directs future research while informing policy and practice to support the effective and scalable adoption of DT-enabled construction safety systems.