Towards BIM and the EU Level(s) Integration: A Systematic Review and Taxonomy of Digitalisation Approaches for Sustainability Assessment

Abstract

Despite the construction sector’s major environmental footprint and the complementary roles of the EU Level(s) framework and BIM in lifecycle-based sustainability assessment, systemic understanding of how the two are integrated remains limited. This study conducts a systematic literature review, following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, based on a search of Scopus, WoS Core Collection and ScienceDirect, resulting in 18 included studies after a full-text screening process. Data are examined through bibliometric, descriptive and cross-dimensional analysis, with the studies further classified along three axes, namely contribution type and application context, depth of EU Level(s) application, and level of digitalisation and interoperability. The results show a still-emerging research field, with a marked increase in publication output from 2025 onwards, concentrated on greenhouse gas emissions, the design stage and semi-automatic interoperability, with no study achieving fully automatic BIM–Level(s) data exchange. These three axes are then read jointly to derive a data-driven taxonomy comprising four typological groups, namely conceptual–exploratory, plugin-based applied, scripting/pipeline-based and cross-domain integration studies, revealing a close alignment between contribution type, depth of Level(s) application and digitalisation level. This taxonomy constitutes this review’s novelty, providing a structured basis for future research and practical implementation of digitally enabled sustainability assessment in the AEC sector.