The integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS) has been identified as a promising but challenging topic to transform information towards the generation of knowledge and intelligence. Achievement of integrating these two concepts and enabling technologies will have a significant impact on solving problems in the civil, building and infrastructure sectors. However, since GIS and BIM were originally developed for different purposes, numerous challenges are being encountered for the integration. To better understand these two different domains, this paper reviews the development and dissimilarities of GIS and BIM, the existing integration methods, and investigates their potential in various applications. This study shows that the integration methods are developed for various reasons and aim to solve different problems. The parameters influencing the choice can be summarized and named as “EEEF” criteria: effectiveness, extensibility, effort, and flexibility. Compared with other methods, semantic web technologies provide a promising and generalized integration solution. However, the biggest challenges of this method are the large efforts required at early stage and the isolated development of ontologies within one particular domain. The isolation problem also applies to other methods. Therefore, openness is the key of the success of BIM and GIS integration.

The integration of building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) in construction management is a new and fast developing trend in recent years, from research to industrial practice. BIM has advantages on rich geometric and semantic information through the building life cycle, while GIS is a broad field covering geovisualization-based decision making and geospatial modelling. However, most current studies of BIM-GIS integration focus on the integration techniques but lack theories and methods for further data analysis and mathematic modelling. This paper reviews the applications and discusses future trends of BIM-GIS integration in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry based on the studies of 96 high-quality research articles from a spatio-temporal statistical perspective. The analysis of these applications helps reveal the evolution progress of BIM-GIS integration. Results show that the utilization of BIM-GIS integration in the AEC industry requires systematic theories beyond integration technologies and deep applications of mathematical modeling methods, including spatio-temporal statistical modeling in GIS and 4D/nD BIM simulation and management. Opportunities of BIM-GIS integration are outlined as three hypotheses in the AEC industry for future research on the in-depth integration of BIM and GIS. BIM-GIS integration hypotheses enable more comprehensive applications through the life cycle of AEC projects.