Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges
Industry 4.0 is making a positive impact on the world’s industries in areas such as productivity, efficiency, reliability, and human safety. Although the mining industry has not undergone revolutionary digital change, numerous technologies have been applied and improved during the past tw...
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IEEE
2025-01-01
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| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10830481/ |
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| author | Mihiran Galagedarage Don Thumeera R. Wanasinghe Raymond G. Gosine Peter J. Warrian |
| author_facet | Mihiran Galagedarage Don Thumeera R. Wanasinghe Raymond G. Gosine Peter J. Warrian |
| author_sort | Mihiran Galagedarage Don |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Industry 4.0 is making a positive impact on the world’s industries in areas such as productivity, efficiency, reliability, and human safety. Although the mining industry has not undergone revolutionary digital change, numerous technologies have been applied and improved during the past two decades. Through a systematic literature survey, this study presents research trends, opportunities, and challenges in the context of digital twinning in the mining industry. The research team initially set the objectives of the research and formulated the search criteria to extract the most relevant and manageable number of scientific peer-reviewed publications. The gathered publications were then filtered using a web-based text reading and analysis environment based on defined criteria. The set of papers that were filtered during the first step was further reduced by manually reading through the abstracts, introductions, and conclusions while classifying relevant publications based on aspects such as the country of origin, technologies, and application areas. The set of papers that were retained following the second step was subjected to detailed manual reading to further explore the technologies and applications to capture the research trends, opportunities, and challenges. The research indicates that China, the USA, Australia, Russia, and Canada are the leading countries in terms of applied research and development of digital twins and enabling technologies for the mining industry. Using virtual reality, a digital twin-enabling technology, to create safer mining environments is a popular research area. In the last twenty years, academic institutions and scholars have led research efforts compared to the industry. Over the past five years, both have significantly increased their research contributions, presenting various opportunities and challenges to inspire future studies. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-e1706474c55d4c8b8a2a40074327bcb1 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2169-3536 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Access |
| spelling | doaj-art-e1706474c55d4c8b8a2a40074327bcb12025-08-20T02:42:00ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-01136945696310.1109/ACCESS.2025.352688110830481Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and ChallengesMihiran Galagedarage Don0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5678-8413Thumeera R. Wanasinghe1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6262-2348Raymond G. Gosine2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8990-115XPeter J. Warrian3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5945-4486Department of Mechanical Engineering, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, CanadaDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, CanadaDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, CanadaInnovation Policy Laboratory, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaIndustry 4.0 is making a positive impact on the world’s industries in areas such as productivity, efficiency, reliability, and human safety. Although the mining industry has not undergone revolutionary digital change, numerous technologies have been applied and improved during the past two decades. Through a systematic literature survey, this study presents research trends, opportunities, and challenges in the context of digital twinning in the mining industry. The research team initially set the objectives of the research and formulated the search criteria to extract the most relevant and manageable number of scientific peer-reviewed publications. The gathered publications were then filtered using a web-based text reading and analysis environment based on defined criteria. The set of papers that were filtered during the first step was further reduced by manually reading through the abstracts, introductions, and conclusions while classifying relevant publications based on aspects such as the country of origin, technologies, and application areas. The set of papers that were retained following the second step was subjected to detailed manual reading to further explore the technologies and applications to capture the research trends, opportunities, and challenges. The research indicates that China, the USA, Australia, Russia, and Canada are the leading countries in terms of applied research and development of digital twins and enabling technologies for the mining industry. Using virtual reality, a digital twin-enabling technology, to create safer mining environments is a popular research area. In the last twenty years, academic institutions and scholars have led research efforts compared to the industry. Over the past five years, both have significantly increased their research contributions, presenting various opportunities and challenges to inspire future studies.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10830481/Digital twin (DT)mining industrysystematic review |
| spellingShingle | Mihiran Galagedarage Don Thumeera R. Wanasinghe Raymond G. Gosine Peter J. Warrian Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges IEEE Access Digital twin (DT) mining industry systematic review |
| title | Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges |
| title_full | Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges |
| title_fullStr | Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges |
| title_full_unstemmed | Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges |
| title_short | Digital Twins and Enabling Technology Applications in Mining: Research Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges |
| title_sort | digital twins and enabling technology applications in mining research trends opportunities and challenges |
| topic | Digital twin (DT) mining industry systematic review |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10830481/ |
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