Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the Impact on Landscape: A Systematic Review of Evolvements, Shortfalls and Future Opportunities

The last decade has notably witnessed a major impact on our climatic characteristics and way of living across urban and rural areas. Following the intensified effects of the climate crisis as well as the crisis of the COVID19 pandemic, this paper aims to cross silos and explore how the sectors of landscape, digital transformation and the built environment can support a resilient future. In the built environment, the impact of digital tools such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) can be recognised across many processes to deliver better value, improve productivity and drive innovative solutions. It can however be noted that most efforts have looked into the impact of BIM at a micro scale (e.g. buildings and developments) with limited focus at the macro scale (e.g. landscape design and climate change). This paper focuses on the digital technology innovations through the lens of the landscape and the exploration of how such tools could contribute to the form of planning and landscape design. It aims to lay a critical review of the impact of BIM on the landscape with insightfully pointing out evolvements, shortfalls and future opportunities. The paper adopts a hybrid approach that includes a systematic selection of research papers focusing on landscape with particular emphasis on climate change, planning and urban design between 2010 and 2021. Findings suggest that, with relation to BIM’s impact on the landscape, most efforts have focused on planning and the small residential scale. Findings also showed that there are limited efforts to investigate landscape design and urbanism and the ways in which digitalization can support sustainable development in open spaces. The area of climate change is significantly overlooked within BIM, raising concerns on the lack of current research on such a critical topic. Using the knowledge from BIM technology, the study provided evidence on the correlation with the landscape and climate change. Evidence demonstrates there is limited connection between BIM and landscape and therefore the study discusses how such tools can improve the understanding of the landscape idea as well as support the creation and visualization of environmentally friendly landscape designs. Future work includes looking into many of the highlighted trends as a result of the study with further investigation on the role that stakeholders can play as part of the digital transformation on landscape