Integrating BIM with greenhouse-gas emissions in AEC: A scientometric review

Mengyun Li,Sai Wang,Kun Lu,Hongyu Wang,P Zhou,R Weerasinghe,Y He

doi:10.1051/e3sconf/202014301008

Abstract

More and more attention has been paid to the application of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the field of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC). However, systematic analysis and visualization of its development trend have not been carried out. This paper combined digital statistical method and scientometrics to analyse major documents published in the Scopus database from 2008 to September 2019 and discussed the development trend, the main journals co-citation and keywords co-occurrence of this field. And then main challenges and future research were summarized by content analysis. The results show that: (1) the number of articles related to integrating BIM with GHG emissions has increased significantly in AEC, which deserves more and more scholars to study in this field; (2) top cited journals mainly focus on built environment, BIM and clean technology; (3) BIM and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are the mainstream issues in the calculation, analysis and decisionmaking of GHG emissions. This review provides status quo and existing main challenges of knowledge system of BIM applied to GHG emissions in AEC, and also offers inspiration for future research.

Highlights

Buildings emit a great deal of greenhouse-gas (GHG) in their life cycle, leading to the intensification of the greenhouse effect and becoming an immense threat to the environment and human survival[1]
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is defined as a set of interrelating policies, processes and technologies that generate a systematic approach to manage the critical information for building design and project data in digital format throughout the life cycle of a building [5]
In order to deepen readers' understanding of study on the BIM application of GHG emissions in AEC, this paper evaluated the content of 106 articles through content analysis

Summary

Introduction

Buildings emit a great deal of greenhouse-gas (GHG) (especially carbon emissions) in their life cycle, leading to the intensification of the greenhouse effect and becoming an immense threat to the environment and human survival[1]. As climate change becomes more pronounced, reducing GHG emissions has become an increasingly urgent challenge for the construction industry. In the past three decades, the development of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has changed the traditional design format and communication mode of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) [4]. BIM is defined as a set of interrelating policies, processes and technologies that generate a systematic approach to manage the critical information for building design and project data in digital format throughout the life cycle of a building [5]. Since BIM is conducive to the calculation and analysis of GHG, many scholars have applied BIM to the emissions of GHG in AEC and achieved some progress [1, 2]

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