Urban water infrastructure systems are crucial to cities' operations; they deliver vital water services that support public needs and convenience. However, these systems face escalating complex challenges that traditional management approaches struggle to cope with. Planning and design of water infrastructure projects are fundamental for water network functionality. Yet water projects are poorly managed and suffer from complexity and inefficiency due to fragmented legacy practices, insufficient data, and poor collaboration. Digital Twin (DT) technologies offer integrated, data-driven frameworks to enhance project performance over the entire infrastructure life cycle. However, their adoption in the water sector remains limited due to low awareness, a lack of empirical evidence on adoption factors, few case studies, and user acceptance issues. This thesis investigates the causes of slow adoption of DTs among diverse water stakeholders, aiming to facilitate their adoption in water infrastructure management. To achieve this, three empirical studies were conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a leader of technological innovation in the Middle East and globally.
The first study investigates barriers to adopting DTs during the design and construction of D&C of water projects from the perspective of digitally savvy water stakeholders. A mixed method approach was used, comprising a structured questionnaire followed by a focus group discussion to contextualize and validate the results. The findings first indicate that key barriers are cybersecurity and data availability issues, a lack of standardization, limited government promotion, workforce digital skill gaps, and concerns about incremental costs. Qualitative insights highlight workforce skill capacity gaps as the most salient barrier, followed by cybersecurity, data quality, governance needs, and cultural resistance. The findings demonstrate how workforce, data-technical, cultural, and institutional dimensions collectively shape perceptions of DT adoption in water infrastructure projects. The study provides actionable insights for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) managers, technology providers, and government policymakers to facilitate DT integration and strengthen digital capacity, advancing the UAE’s vision for sustainable water management. The study contributes with a refined two-level insight framework on barriers analysis with underlaying factors. Besides, it validates context-specific barriers, adding to the global discourse on digitalization in urban water management. Thereby, it facilitates early-stage adoption and open avenues for future studies on digital transformation in water management.
To address insufficient awareness of adoption drivers and the limited empirical evidence of project success. The second study examines the key drivers and perceived project success of digital water project implementations in the UAE. The analysis focuses on survey responses collected exclusively from digitally experienced stakeholders and triangulates with synthesized qualitative data on water case studies. The survey results indicate that performance optimization, leveraging data to reduce costs, asset-risk mitigation, and public-safety management are the key drivers of DTs adoption. Participants concurred on all drivers, except cost reduction and customer service, reflecting varying organizational priorities. Triangulation with global case studies corroborates the findings but highlights regulatory compliance as a more dominant driver globally than perceived within the UAE context. Both results show that digital twining projects are associated with positive perceptions of project success, as evidenced by goals’ achievement and team satisfaction. The study provides insights for policymakers in the UAE, underscoring the need for adaptive regulatory frameworks, coordinated governance, and clear mandates that connect DTs deployment to asset management and sustainability outcomes. The results advance the emerging literature on digitalization in critical infrastructure. They identify, for the first time, empirical drivers of adoption in the Middle East and offer a perspective on project success, thereby informing water stakeholders and guiding future research directions.
The fast evolution of digital platforms offers new opportunities to improve service delivery through citizen engagement. An Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled application offered by the water authority in Dubai provides the public with alert notifications for high water use. User acceptance is essential for effectively managing water consumption through households' digital tool. However, user acceptance continues to hinder the tool's adoption and successful implementation. The third study proposes an extended acceptance model based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) framework, incorporating relevant factors to predict users’ intentions to use the digital tool. Primary data were collected from Dubai citizens via a cross-sectional survey, resulting in 149 valid responses. The responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling (Weighted Least Squares Mean and Variance-adjusted (WLSMV) in the R programming environment. The results indicate that water security concern (WSC), a novel construct, and perceived usefulness (PU) are the direct enablers of behavioral intention (BI). Mobile self-efficacy (MSE) is a significant positive predictor of perceived ease of use (PEOU), whereas mobile device anxiety (MDA) negatively predicts it. Government policies (GP) significantly influence perceived usefulness (PU). As expected, PEOU positively predicted PU, which in turn significantly predicted BI, underscoring the TAM relationships. The extended model demonstrated substantial predictive power in behavioral intention. The study's implications offer a valid predictive framework for planning digital water tools, extend TAM into governance sustainability settings, and pave the way for further experimental studies on adoption and post-implementation settings.