Implementation of augmented reality and mixed reality applications for smart facilities management: a systematic review

Purpose

The Operations and Maintenance (O&M) cost of a facility is typically 60–85% of the total life cycle cost of a building whereas its design and construction cost accounts for only 5–10%. Therefore, enhancing and optimizing the O&M of a facility is a crucial issue. In addition, with the increasing complexities in a building's operating systems, more technologically advanced solutions are required for proactively maintaining a facility. Thereby, a tool is needed which can optimize and reduce the cost of facility maintenance. One of the solutions is Augmented or Mixed Reality (AR/MR) technologies which can reduce repair time, training time and streamline inspections. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish contextual knowledge of AR/MR application in facilities operation and maintenance and present an implementation framework through the analysis and classification of articles published between 2015 and 2022.

Design/methodology/approach

To effectively understand all AR/MR applications in facilities management (FM), a systematic literature review is performed. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) protocol was followed for searching and describing the search strategies. Keywords were identified through the concept mapping technique. The Scopus database and Google Scholar were employed to find relevant articles, books and conference papers. A thorough bibliometric analysis was conducted using VOS Viewer and subsequently, a thematic analysis was performed for the selected publications.

Findings

The use of AR/MR within facilities O&M could be categorized into five different application areas: (1) visualization; (2) maintenance; (3) indoor localization and positioning; (4) information management and (5) indoor environment. After a thematic analysis of the literature, it was found that maintenance and indoor localization were the most frequently used research application domains. The chronological evolution of AR/MR in FM is also presented along with the origin of publications, which showed that the technology is out of its infancy stage and is ready for implementation. However, literature showed many challenges hindering this goal, that is (1) reluctance of the organizational leadership to bear the cost of hardware and trainings for the employees, (2) Lack of BIM use in FM and (3) system lagging, crashing and unable to register the real environment. A preliminary framework is presented to overcome these challenges.

Originality/value

This study accommodates a variety of application domains within facilities O&M. The publications were systematically selected from the existing literature and then reviewed to exhibit various AR/MR applications to support FM. There have been no literature reviews that focus on AR and/or MR in the FM and this paper fills the gap by not only presenting its applications but also developing an implementation framework.