Building Information Modeling (BIM), Blockchain, and LiDAR applications in construction lifecycle: bibliometric, and network analysis

Investigating Industry 4.0 technologies and studying their impacts on various aspects of the construction industry, including stakeholders and the lifecycle, is vital to enhance novel applications of such technologies in an industry that is known as Construction 4.0. The main objective of the current state-of-the-art review is to provide a comprehensive literature review on three widely used Industry 4.0 technologies, Building Information Modeling (BIM), Blockchain, and LiDAR, which have strong potential to promote and optimize different activities of the project, and also, the integration of them can greatly impact the construction industry in the whole project lifecycle. A bibliometric analysis of keyword co-occurrence and citations revealed a significant number of publications from 2014 to 2023 investigating the selected technologies. Recent trends indicate that the majority of papers have considered the selected technologies in the integration with each other. However, a specific gap exists in the literature regarding the interactions and potential synergies among these technologies. This gap limits the understanding of how these integrations can address challenges unique to the construction industry and hinders the development of comprehensive solutions. The review has been analyzed and discussed in reference to the type of article, single or multi technologies, the lifecycle, and their applications. The study showed that the integration of BIM, Blockchain, and LiDAR, as a recent trend and as a beneficial solution to automate the whole construction process, has considerable capacities to improve the productivity of the construction industry. Finally, some application areas for the integration of these three technologies are concluded and are suggested, and therefore, an advantageous reference has been provided for scholars to plan their future research in this sector.