# BIM Visual Programming Tools Applications in Infrastructure Projects: A State-of-the-Art Review
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Analysis of Results by Topic of the Papers
The topics covered in the papers associated with the operation and construction of infrastructure projects were the development of inspection systems, for both bridges [99; 131] and roads [96], and the evaluation of construction work scenarios [70; 116]. Although these applications covered many scenarios, as expected from the operation of these infrastructures, they was not found in other VP applications such as: (1) automated estimation of operational road emissions using VP algorithms that transfer real information on traffic and the vehicle fleet; (2) measurement of control variables in bridge assembly using low-cost sensors with subsequent reading and updating of BIM models [132; 133]; and (3) automated review and checking of infrastructure multi-models during proposal evaluation stages [134; 135]. Table 5 presents a summary of the reviewed publications indicating the type of project, the life cycle of the infrastructures studied by the publications, and the VP tool-BIM software used. The purpose of this table is to facilitate the bibliographic search of future investigations of VP applications on civil engineering. The results of this review show that the potential research lines (trends) of VP tools in infrastructure projects are as follows: (1) Automation of the design of infrastructures: Parametric design is clearly the main application of VP algorithms in the literature. VP tools \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Project Type** & **Life Cycle Stage** & **VP Tool-BIM Software** & **Reference** \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{Bridge} & Operation & Python-API & [99] \\  & Operation & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [131] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [23] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [118] \\  & Construction & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [116] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [92] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [122] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [94] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [123] \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{Other infrastructures} & Design & Grasshopper-Rhinoceros & [108] \\  & Operation & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [132] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [109] \\  & Construction & Grasshopper-Rhinoceros & [98] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [112] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [113] \\  & Design & Grasshopper-ArchiCad & [100] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [124] \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{Tunnels} & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [101] \\  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [101] \\ \cline{1-1}  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [93] \\ \cline{1-1}  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [130] \\ \cline{1-1}  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [120] \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-5}  & Design & Autodesk Dynamo-Revit & [121] \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Roads} & Design & Grasshopper-Dynamo & [97] \\ \cline{1-1}  & Design & Dynamo-Python & [111] \\ \cline{1-1}  & Design & Python-API & [116] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 5: Classification of reviewed publications according to project type, tool used, and the life cycle stage. have been used for the automation of the design of a number of infrastructure elements in the literature (such as bridges, roads, and tunnels). In the future, it is expected that these tools will be also applied for the parametric automation of the design of a growing number of infrastructure projects. Nevertheless, these publications have focused on the automation of the longitudinal design of bridges, roads, and tunnels. This situation has generated a critical gap in the design of specific elements, such as abutments, foundations, or reaction frames for tunnel boring machines. (2) Interoperability with Web applications: The generation of virtual clouds that support BIM information models will be an important trend in projects' digitization because this can be used to manage and generate automatic information for evaluating and assessing BIM processes. Therefore, it is highly likely that VP algorithms will improve the compatibility of their VP language with that of Web servers.