Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Integration with Digital Technologies toward Construction 4.0: A Systematic Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper aims to evaluate the implementation of UAV equipment in conjunction with other technologies. The A/AA adopt the Preferred  Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to perform a systematic literature review to determine application areas and technology trends regarding the integration of UAVs with other DTs toward the age of Construction 4.0. Results of the analysis show seven application areas of UAV integration with other DTs were identified.

 

 

Overall evaluation:

Writing style: The manuscript has been written in an appropriate academic style; however the authors could pay more attention to the readability of the paper.

Structure of the paper: The sections are enough clear and it is quite easy to follow.

Logic and supporting arguments: More supporting arguments and comments are required to understand the discussion.

Purpose: The overall purpose of the academic discussion is useful and compelling.

The above is to say that the paper discusses an interesting topic but are necessary further efforts to add ulterior comments and explanations. Therefore, the work contains presentation and content issues that must be necessarily addressed.

Major comments:

 

• The research methodology is appropriate and robust for meeting the research aims. However, in the Materials and Methodsm the A/AA should clarify why they select those keywords (lines 98-108);

 

• The findings are appropriately analysed and interpreted.

 

• The A/AA, in my opinion, should highlight the implications of the work by discussing how the findings contribute to the body of knowledge (enriching existing theory and helping improve managerial/institutional practice). In particular, could be interesting highlight the work’s impact upon society and public policy (influencing attitudes, affecting society).

Minor comments:

• I would like to remind the A/AA that the abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. Please, rewrite it.
• The A/AA should do professional proofreading in order to improve the readability of the work.

Author Response

The authors would like to sincerely appreciate the anonymous reviewer who provided thorough reviews and valuable comments to help us improve the manuscript. We strongly believe that in the revision we have fully addressed the reviewer’s comments and concerns and carefully revised the manuscript based on the feedback we have received. Please see the followings below responding to the reviewer’s comments.

Reviewer’s comments

The paper aims to evaluate the implementation of UAV equipment in conjunction with other technologies. The A/AA adopt the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to perform a systematic literature review to determine application areas and technology trends regarding the integration of UAVs with other DTs toward the age of Construction 4.0. Results of the analysis show seven application areas of UAV integration with other DTs were identified.

Overall evaluation:

Writing style: The manuscript has been written in an appropriate academic style; however, the authors could pay more attention to the readability of the paper.

Structure of the paper: The sections are enough clear and it is quite easy to follow.

Logic and supporting arguments: More supporting arguments and comments are required to understand the discussion.

Purpose: The overall purpose of the academic discussion is useful and compelling.

The above is to say that the paper discusses an interesting topic but are necessary further efforts to add ulterior comments and explanations. Therefore, the work contains presentation and content issues that must be necessarily addressed.

Major comments:

Comment. The research methodology is appropriate and robust for meeting the research aims. However, in the Materials and Methodsm the A/AA should clarify why they select those keywords (lines 98-108):

Response. According to the reviewer's comment, the authors added the explanation of why those keywords were chosen, as shown below:

To answer the research objectives of this study, the search terms comprised combinations of three main keywords. The first keyword represented the UAVs are “unmanned aerial vehicle,” included numerous synonyms, such as “unmanned aerial system” and “drone.” The second keyword, “construction management,” was equated in this study with “construction industry” and “construction 4.0.” Lastly, the third keyword encompassed other 4.0 technologies in construction industry: "Building Information Modeling,” "Geographic Information System,” "Internet of Things,” "Mixed Reality,” "Virtual Reality,” "Augmented Reality,” “information and communication technology,” and “sensing technology.” The keywords for other DTs were gained based on preliminary study about various technologies currently implemented in the construction industry. The keywords were searched using the Boolean operator "AND" to extract discrete keywords that were required to be present in the records and "OR" to connect two or more similar terms in keywords. Table 1 summarizes the search results for each database.

Comments. The findings are appropriately analysed and interpreted.

The A/AA, in my opinion, should highlight the implications of the work by discussing how the findings contribute to the body of knowledge (enriching existing theory and helping improve managerial/institutional practice). In particular, could be interesting highlight the work’s impact upon society and public policy (influencing attitudes, affecting society).

Minor comments:

• I would like to remind the A/AA that the abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. Please, rewrite it.

Response. According to the reviewer's comment, the authors revised the abstract with 200 words maximum, as shown below:

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been employed into the construction industry in the last decade for various purposes such as progress monitoring and building inspection. Recently, there is a raising trend of employing UAV with other digital technologies (DTs) such as Building Information Modeling and Extended Reality. The integration of these technologies encourages automation and digitization toward better project performance. However, little is known about the implementation of UAVs in conjunction with other DTs. Therefore, this study performs a systematic literature review to determine application areas and technology trends regarding UAVs integration with other DTs. The search yielded 287 articles, of which 36 satisfied the established inclusion criteria and formed the foundation of this systematic review. Seven application areas of UAV integration with other DTs were identified: progress monitoring, historic building conservation, information management, construction safety, construction education, structural and infrastructure inspection, and transportation. This study also revealed UAV technology trends encouraging automation and digitization: automated progress monitoring, automated UAV inspection planning, real-time video streaming, and parametric model development of historical buildings. This study is expected to be a starting point of future in-depth research by providing a general understanding of the current applications of UAVs integration with other DTs.

• The A/AA should do professional proofreading in order to improve the readability of the work.

Response. Responding to the reviewer's comment, the authors applied for language editing service from MDPI. Therefore, the revised manuscript will be updated after language editing service from MDPI.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is interesting article, dealing with the UAV issue, which is quite new technology used in Construction 4.0. From one side everything is correct - the structure of the article, the explanation about the materials and methods, analysis, conducted discussion and conclusion. However, I worry about the sample size - 36 articles. I think it is too few to make some major conclusions. Maybe authors could put a bigger attention to the possibilities of further research, treating the conducted systematic literature analysis as a starting point? Also:

• abstract is too long
• I am missing the main purpose of the conducted systematic literature analysis 
• there is no deep literature analysis

Author Response

The authors would like to sincerely appreciate the anonymous reviewer who provided thorough reviews and valuable comments to help us improve the manuscript. We strongly believe that in the revision we have fully addressed the reviewer’s comments and concerns and carefully revised the manuscript based on the feedback we have received. Please see the followings below responding to the reviewer’s comments.

Reviewer’s comments

This is interesting article, dealing with the UAV issue, which is quite new technology used in Construction 4.0. From one side everything is correct - the structure of the article, the explanation about the materials and methods, analysis, conducted discussion and conclusion. However, I worry about the sample size - 36 articles. I think it is too few to make some major conclusions. Maybe authors could put a bigger attention to the possibilities of further research, treating the conducted systematic literature analysis as a starting point? Also:

Comment 1. Abstract is too long.

Response. According to the reviewer's comment, authors revised the abstract with 200 words maximum, as shown below:

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been employed into the construction industry in the last decade for various purposes such as progress monitoring and building inspection. Recently, there is a raising trend of employing UAV with other digital technologies (DTs) such as Building Information Modeling and Extended Reality. The integration of these technologies encourages automation and digitization toward better project performance. However, little is known about the implementation of UAVs in conjunction with other DTs. Therefore, this study performs a systematic literature review to determine application areas and technology trends regarding UAVs integration with other DTs. The search yielded 287 articles, of which 36 satisfied the established inclusion criteria and formed the foundation of this systematic review. Seven application areas of UAV integration with other DTs were identified: progress monitoring, historic building conservation, information management, construction safety, construction education, structural and infrastructure inspection, and transportation. This study also revealed UAV technology trends encouraging automation and digitization: automated progress monitoring, automated UAV inspection planning, real-time video streaming, and parametric model development of historical buildings. This study is expected to be a starting point of future in-depth research by providing a general understanding of the current applications of UAVs integration with other DTs.

Comment 2. I am missing the main purpose of the conducted systematic literature analysis 

Response. According to the reviewer's comment, authors revised the last paragraph of Introduction part to better explaining the main purpose of conducting systematic literature review, as shown below:

Adopting these emergent technologies is expected to improve productivity and communication, reduce costs, and support reliable decision-making. A few researchers have published review papers regarding these technologies: Perrier et al. [4] presented an overview of DTs in Construction 4.0 era and Khan et al. [20] conducted a literature review on BIM integration with other immersive technologies [20]. However, no prior reviews have examined the integration of UAVs with other DTs. Whereas, knowing UAV integration with other DTs can assist researchers and professionals to improve the project performance even more. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to systematically review peer-reviewed academic studies on integration of UAV with other DTs. By providing a general understanding of current application areas and technology trends of UAV integration with other DTs, this study can serve as a starting point for future, in-depth studies. Specifically, this study seeks to answer the following research questions. (1) What are the construction-related application areas of UAV integration with other DTs? (2) What is the most extensively used construction-related application area for UAV integration with other DTs? (3) What are the construction-related technology trends of UAV integration with other DTs?

Comment 3. There is no deep literature analysis

Response. According to the reviewer's comment, authors revised the last paragraph of Introduction part to explain that this study purpose is to only provide general understanding of current application areas and technology trends of UAV integration with other DTs. This study can be further used for future in-depth study, as shown below:

Adopting these emergent technologies is expected to improve productivity and communication, reduce costs, and support reliable decision-making. A few researchers have published review papers regarding these technologies: Perrier et al. [4] presented an overview of DTs in Construction 4.0 era and Khan et al. [20] conducted a literature review on BIM integration with other immersive technologies [20]. However, no prior reviews have examined the integration of UAVs with other DTs. Whereas, knowing UAV integration with other DTs can assist researchers and professionals to improve the project performance even more. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to systematically review peer-reviewed academic studies on integration of UAV with other DTs. By providing a general understanding of current application areas and technology trends of UAV integration with other DTs, this study can serve as a starting point for future, in-depth studies. Specifically, this study seeks to answer the following research questions. (1) What are the construction-related application areas of UAV integration with other DTs? (2) What is the most extensively used construction-related application area for UAV integration with other DTs? (3) What are the construction-related technology trends of UAV integration with other DTs?

The authors also revised the first paragraph of Conclusion part, as shown below:

This paper presented a comprehensive systematic literature review of the integration of UAVs with other DTs in anticipation of the emergent Construction 4.0 era. Unlike other reviews, this literature review grouped UAV integration with other DTs under application areas and further identified technology trends based on Construction 4.0 features (automation, digitization, interoperability, and real-time simulation). Based on articles selection using PRISMA 2020 guideline, 36 articles focusing on integration of UAV with other DTs became the foundation of this study. The outcomes of this study are expected to be the starting point in assisting construction researchers and professionals for further advancement of UAV usage in the construction domain.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

After checking the authors' comments, I can see that my remarks were taken account and, according to them, the paper has been changed.