Exploring Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Internet of Things (IoT) Integration for Sustainable Building

Abstract

Sustainable development, which has become the priority study of architectural design, is receiving increasing attention with global climate change. At the same time, the building industry is urgently changing towards intelligent and digitalized tendencies. As a result, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the Internet of Things (IoT) make crucial contributions to the transforming process. However, there is little knowledge of the integration of BIM–IoT in sustainable building from a macro perspective. Moreover, most existing research adopts a literature review method and lacks objective quantitative analysis. Few papers use bibliometric analysis to study the respective BIM and IoT research fields. Furthermore, few studies use Citespace software tools to analyze the integrated application of BIM–IoT. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the research frontiers and knowledge structure in BIM–IoT integration and the relationship between BIM-IoT and sustainable building and explore the research hotspots, trends, and future research directions. A quick and objective method was proposed to understand the research status of these new and rapidly developing fields. This paper uses topic search in the web of science core collection to obtain relevant literature and then uses Citespace for bibliometric analysis based on the literature review. Controlled terms and subject terms statistics from the Engineering Index core database search results are also used to briefly examine the fields’ research frontiers and hotspots as obtained from Citespace. The results show that: (1) The research on BIM–IoT integration focuses on building intelligence with BIM as the basis of application, and research on BIM–IoT integration within the field of sustainable building is currently focused on the first three phases of the life cycle. (2) The development of sustainable buildings needs to be considered on its human and social dimensions. BIM provides a platform for sharing information and communication among stakeholders involved in the building’s entire life cycle. At the same time, IoT allows occupants to better participate in buildings’ sustainable design and decision making. (3) In the future, more emerging technologies such as cloud computing and big data are required to better promote sustainable buildings and thus realize the construction of sustainable smart cities. At the same time, researchers should also pay attention to the sustainable transformation of existing buildings.