The unbalanced research on digitalization and automation of the building permitting process

The building permitting process is characterized by enormous complexity and multidisciplinarity. It consists of multiple steps, and many involved stakeholders with various responsibilities and personal goals. This, together with the fact that in common practice issuance of a building permit is mostly manual, makes the process long, inefficient and subjective. Digitalization of the building permitting process has been a subject of interest for many researchers. In this work, by implementing a systematic literature review, we map the existing knowledge gaps in the domain that hinder further development and facilitation of technological solutions within the building permitting process. This work demonstrates that the lack of fundamental research and the lack of detailed investigation of each individual sub-process within the entire permitting process, hinder further development of digital or automated solutions for building permitting. Furthermore, we provide a detailed mapping of the sub-processes that building permitting comprises of, as identified in the existing research. As much of the existing research efforts are focused on digitalization and automation aspects, we also provide a clear definition of the different levels of digitalization and automation of the permitting process.