GIS based solutions for management of public building and infrastructure assets: a review of state of the art and research trend analysis

Researchers have performed an in-depth literature review about the application of GIS technologies to public asset management. The review findings are categorized by asset type and research trend analysis is performed revealing many useful applications and showing promising gaps for future research. There are significant improvements that can be made in the field including getting better data integration, performing more risk assessment using GIS technologies, and creating and improved decision support systems to take decision making from reactive to proactive. Furthermore, more research can be done on specific individual asset types. The researchers also present a software tool to improve keyword-based gap analysis which is based on Natural Language Processing. The tool allows the clustering of keyword research terms from a body of literature to be grouped by theme or focus area and it reveals potential research gaps within each given theme.

Asset management is the longest and most costly part of any built asset’s life cycle. Municipalities face challenges in managing often quite large built asset portfolios with limited budgets. The spatial component of many assets often has a significant impact on cost, as well as on asset health and usage. This component is difficult to grasp and can be quite data heavy. GIS technology can solve many spatial challenges related to asset management such as site assessment, monitoring, prioritization of rehabilitation, risk assessment, inventory, and cost and emissions analyses. GIS can also be used to visualize data and facilitate communication and understanding.

A systematic literature review was performed on GIS and public asset management to aid municipalities, researchers, and practitioners, navigate the research applications of GIS technologies across different asset classes and to identify opportunities for future technological development and collaboration. The systematic literature review was performed using the query

municipal OR public “GIS” “asset management” AND PUBYEAR > 2013 AND PUBYEAR < 2025 AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “COMP”))

The full corpus of selected literature was used to perform keyword trend analysis and 62 works were selected for in depth study.

The keyword trend analysis was done using Vosviewer[1] which can build keyword co-occurrence networks for visualization. The trend analysis also incorporated this search query:

“GIS” AND “CIVIL ENGINEERING” AND PUBYEAR > 2009 AND PUBYEAR < 2025 AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “COMP”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “cp”) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ar”))

which represents GIS and Civil Engineering research, and this search query:

municipal OR public “asset management” AND PUBYEAR > 2009 AND PUBYEAR < 2025 AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "“COMP”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “cp”) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ar”))

which resents Public Asset Management. These search queries were incorporated for comparison.

The trend analysis revealed that individual asset type research is becoming less popular and that information technology related research is becoming more popular. However practical understanding of digital technologies requires further growth.

There is a gap in research for remote sensing, land use, urban growth, and forecasting. There is also opportunity to go further in risk assessment research to focus on specific types of risk such as floods, landslides, earthquakes, and natural disasters. A gap also exists in using Internet of Things approaches for GIS and public asset management.

While these trends are informative, the keyword co-occurrence analysis was limited to a high level because using more than several dozen terms quickly leads to cluttered and difficult to decipher graphs. A tool was built by the researchers to allow more in-depth gap analysis based on keywords. The tool uses natural language processing (NLP) to group similar keywords together and create clusters around different research topics. This tool shows where potential research gaps lie within given research topics of a research field. It also allows the retention of many more keyword terms without cluttering the produced graphs. This is because each research topic cluster is presented as a separate graph as opposed to the Vosviewer approach of presenting all clusters within one graph. This NLP based tool produces better graphs on specific research topics and it uses more keyword terms allowing for more in-depth gap analysis.

The presented NLP based gap analysis tool was used on the GIS and public asset management research query; with the GIS and Civil Engineering query being used as a reference of a broader research field of which GIS and asset management is a sub field.

The major areas of opportunity were found to be in AI methods, specifically CNN to process the image like map data that is produced by GIS. Additional opportunities are in Water Resources, Physical Environment, Risk Assessment, and Remote sensing. In this analysis remote sensing also includes imaging. The tool produced graphs which show applied and yet to be applied approaches and techniques for each research topic.

As part of the systematic literature review; 62 works were selected for in depth study. The works were grouped into asset categories. The categories are Roads and Highways, Bridges, Railway, Electrical and Gas Utilities, Infrastructure and Urban Planning, Heritage, Public Buildings, Hospitals Airports and Universities, Water Distribution Systems (WDS), Sewer, and Dams.

A summary of each research work is presented, highlighting methods and approaches and applications. These results are useful for practitioners, researchers, and public authorities, to navigate the research field and to select approaches for implementation and further study.

The in-depth study revealed further research gaps. There is a trend for methods to be applied to managing existing assets as opposed to planning new assets. Linear assets such as roads are more often studied than point assets such as airports. A larger variety of asset types could be studied. Within each asset category there are variations in asset type such as different types of hospitals, and different types of terrain. These variations could be further studied to understand specific effects and impacts of GIS technologies. GIS can be further explored for site analysis, monitoring and cost reductions. There is also continuing improvement in visualization technologies, and any further development would be welcome. Computation of data is expensive and calculations on large volumes of data is difficult to realize. 3D modeling is very interesting but remains computationally expensive. There is also a need for unified software solutions instead of patchwork pipelines. This includes GIS-BIM integration, but also includes connecting other types of data sources such as seismic, hydraulic, and electrical.

There is a lack of publicly available datasets for GIS and Public Asset Management. Data is difficult and costly to collect and this leads it to not being shared with the research community. This results in the field is being quite siloed. More publicly available datasets are needed to evaluate performance of different methods, set performance benchmarks, and increase collaboration. Publicly available datasets will also help with replicability of results. Due to the siloed nature of the research field, where authors of works only publish with other authors of those same works, any significant collaboration between multiple research groups has potential to be significant breakout research.

There is also considerable interest in 3D modelling and BIM. Methods are emerging that could be further developed from 3D model to fully fledged digital twin. SAR and Point Clouds are sensing and visualization technologies that could be further leveraged across more applications. AI related research is also considerably prevalent.

A wide variety of methods and applications are emerging in the research field. The overall technology readiness level needs to be driven further in order to facilitate adoption among practitioners. More practical case studies and implementation of all of the planned components in a research plan will build confidence and lead to these technologies being used for asset management projects and operations.

The literature review concludes with an overview of practical applications of GIS for public asset management. This is done to aid public authorities in selecting GIS technologies for their asset management needs. Broad level highlights of general applications and their benefits are presented. This includes condition assessment, visualization and planning, and enabling digital twin.

A systematic literature review was performed to aid researchers, practitioners, and public authorities, navigate the field of GIS for public asset management. Broad level trend analysis was complemented with in-depth study that presents approaches and applications across specific asset types. An NLP AI powered tool is also presented to improve broad level gap analysis which identifies research gaps per research topic within a research field. A summary of applications geared toward public authorities is also presented to highlight broad technology applications across different types of assets.

This paper ”GIS based solutions for management of public building and infrastructure assets: a review of state of the art and research trend analysis” was published in Smart Construction.

Popov P, Mozaffari MH, RazaviAlavi S, Jalaei F. GIS based solutions for management of public building and infrastructure assets: a review of state of the art and research trend analysis. Smart Constr. 2025(2):0009, https://doi.org/10.55092/sc20250009.