Problem Statement: Highperformance building design has become a complex, multi-criteria problem requiring the simultaneous integration of criteria such as energy, comfort, carbon, and cost in the early design stages. Despite the growing use of performance simulation tools and Building Information Modeling (BIM), a significant gap remains between generating and structuring performance data and interpreting and transforming them into usable knowledge for design decisions.
Research Objectives: To address this gap, this study integratively analyzes the literature across three domains—performance-based design, BIM, and Decision Support Systems (DSS)—and explains their complementary roles within the conceptual “Data to Decision” framework.
Research Method: A two-stage systematic review combining bibliometric analysis and thematic synthesis was conducted. Peer-reviewed English-language articles published between 2015 and 2025 were retrieved from Scopus, and 222 articles were examined using VOSviewer and structured thematic analysis based on the research questions.
Conclusion: The findings show that the challenges of performance-based design are not merely technical but involve a combination of data-related, cognitive, and organizational issues. Although BIM provides an effective infrastructure for collecting, structuring, and integrating design information, it remains limited in supporting design interpretation, reasoning, and judgment. In contrast, DSSs can complement this role through capabilities such as performance prediction, sensitivity analysis, alternative generation and comparison, and prioritization; however, existing tools remain limited in cognitive support, uncertainty management, decision transparency, and connection to real-world data. By synthesizing the three domains, this study proposes the “Data to Decision” framework to organize the progression from data and information to knowledge and decision. By clarifying the complementary roles of BIM and DSS, the framework can support the analysis of existing tools and guide future development studies on decision-support systems for performance-based design.