Abstract
As a data tool applicable to the full life-cycle of construction engineering and management, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has great potential for significantly increasing project productivity and performance. Awareness of BIM application hotspots and forecasting its trends can drive innovations in construction field. Using patents as data resources, this study develops an effective framework integrating the citation network analysis and the topic clustering technology to identify BIM application information and forecast its trends. This framework comprises three-step analysis:(1) quantitative characteristic analysis of patent outputs; (2) Social Network Analysis (SNA)-based co-occurrence network analysis; and (3) identification of BIM topics using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Finally, the case demonstrates the effectiveness of this framework contributing to promote technological development and innovation of BIM. The contributions of this study are threefold: (1) an innovative text mining-based framework for BIM patent analysis in construction is developed; (2) patents that have focused on identifying the application hotspots and development trend of BIM in accordance with our developed framework are reviewed; and (3) a signpost for technological development and innovation of BIM is provided.
Highlights
The Engineering Fronts research project has been jointly launched by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Clarivate Analytics, and Higher Education Press since 2017 (Cai et al, 2018)
This study aims to identify the application hotspots of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and forecast its trends in an effective framework using patents as data resources and integrating two text mining technologies, the citation network analysis and the topic clustering technology
The contributions of this study are threefold: (1) an innovative text mining-based framework for BIM patent analysis in construction is developed; (2) patents that have focused on identifying the application hotspots and development trend of BIM in accordance with our developed framework are reviewed; and (3) a signpost for technological development and innovation of BIM is provided
Summary
The Engineering Fronts research project has been jointly launched by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Clarivate Analytics, and Higher Education Press since 2017 (Cai et al, 2018). The global experts are gathered to evaluate current frontiers in engineering research, and provide strategic responses to the issues of global challenges and sustainable development. In the field of construction engineering and management, the frontiers focus on demanddriven technology. The development front, referring to the development of technology, can be screened out from patent data aiming to solve practical problems in technology. It is forward-looking, pioneering and exploratory, which has a major impact and indispensable role in the future of engineering technology. The Building Information Modeling-based (BIM-based) construction management system is one of the top 10 development fronts (Cai et al, 2018)
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