Building Information Modeling (BIM) for transportation infrastructure - Literature review, applications, challenges, and recommendations

Transportation infrastructure is a critical component to a nation's economy, security, and wellbeing. In order to keep up with the rising population, there is a great need for more efficient and cost-effective technologies and techniques to not only repair the infrastructure, but also to advance and expand the transportation infrastructure to sustain the growing population. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been widely adopted in the building industry, and its established methods and technologies show enormous potential in benefiting the transportation industry. The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review and critical analysis of BIM for transportation infrastructure. A total of 189 publications in the area of BIM for transportation infrastructure were reviewed, including journal articles, conference proceedings, and published reports. Additionally, schemas and file formats from 9 main categories and 34 areas related to transportation infrastructure were reviewed. An application was developed to collect, store, and analyze the publications. Various algorithms were developed and implemented to help in the automation and analysis of the review. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive, up-to-date literature review and critical analysis of research areas regarding BIM for transportation infrastructure to further facilitate research and applications in this domain. Based on the results of the analysis, current topics and trends, applications and uses, emerging technologies, benefits, challenges and limitations, research gaps, and future needs are discussed. Significantly, the contribution of this paper is providing the foundation of current research, gaps, and emerging technologies needed to facilitate further research and applications for both academia and industry stakeholders to develop more efficient and cost-effective techniques necessary to repair, advance, and expand the transportation infrastructure. Furthermore, the results show that the use of BIM for transportation infrastructure has been increasing, although the research has mainly been focusing on roads, highways, and bridges. The results also reveal a major need for a standard neutral exchange format and schema to promote interoperability. Most importantly, the continuing collaboration between academia and industry is required to mitigate most challenges and to realize the full potential of BIM for transportation infrastructure.