Digital Twin Technology for Smart Campus Management in Higher Education

Abstract

Universities are under pressure to modernize how they manage their campuses, and Digital Twin (DT) technology, a continuously updated virtual replica of a physical campus environment, has become one of the most closely watched tools for doing this. Interest in the topic is growing quickly across education-technology, cybersecurity, and digital-infrastructure journals, yet much of the evidence remains scattered across single-institution case studies. This study brings that evidence together through a qualitative systematic literature review of studies published between 2021 and 2025, combined with verified, real-world implementation data from universities in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Thailand, and South Korea. The reviewed case studies report improvements in facility optimization, energy efficiency, classroom utilization, and emergency response planning, with documented energy savings ranging from about 5% under baseline automation upgrades to more than 60% for targeted lighting control. Infrastructure investment, system interoperability, data privacy, and cybersecurity remain significant barriers, particularly for resource-constrained institutions. To help close the gap between research findings and practical adoption, this paper proposes a five-layer DT smart-campus architecture and a tiered cost-adoption framework, and connects the findings to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4, 7, 9, and 11, as well as to Indonesian national research and higher-education digitalization policy. Overall, DT technology offers strong, empirically supported potential for smart campus development, provided it is backed by adequate digital infrastructure, interoperability standards, and governance.