Levels of detail, development, definition, and information need: a critical literature review

Abstract

The construction industry relies on precise building information for evaluating designs performance, collaboration, and delivery. For more than a decade, the Level of Development (LOD) is the most popular concept for describing the progression of geometric and semantic information across the design phases. The LOD is a domain language that aims to establish a common understanding of what each level means to facilitate communication and defining deliverables in contracts among the project participants. However, multiple similar standards are published worldwide for a similar purpose, such as Level of Detail, Level of Definition, and Level of Information Need. However, although they are similar at first glance, in many cases, they have numerous deviations in their fundamentals. This paper investigates the differences of the LOD standards and their interpretation by the scientific community through a thorough analysis. For this purpose, 58 LOD guidelines were reviewed, and a systematic literature review of 299 peer-reviewed publications was conducted. As a result, existing trends in using the LOD in research and the most widespread LOD naming conventions and specifications were identified. Additionally, the results highlight 16 common use cases for applying the LOD.