Is BIM Big Enough to Take Advantage of Big Data Analytics?

As the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Facilities Management industry undergoes a profound change with Building Information Modeling (BIM), it seems the right moment to properly re-structure the inherent processes to promote a new wave of innovation. To leverage digital information from each individual project into business value for the whole industry, researchers must borrow knowledge and solutions from computational fields, such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining and Data Science. They will provide a guide to the development, and even transformation of current BIM processes, with potential for development of new tools and automation of many tasks. What is not entirely clear is if BIM could take advantage also from Big Data Analytics, as some professionals are been advocating. In this paper, the author analyzes Big Data problems and the BIM context, and argues that BIM could not immediately take advantage from Big Data-infrastructure. Nevertheless, a route of development is suggested, which extends BIM from its predominantly building-focused models to models that encompass an entire city, which certainly will demand Big Data Analytics. Thus, a new City Information Modeling seems to be the right path of development for BIM as it turns to be integrated with Geographic Information Systems and will lead to tools that would be adequate for future Smart Cities planning and management.