An investigation into the applicability of building information models in geospatial environment in support of site selection and fire response management processes

Abstract

Some tasks in the construction industry and urban management field such as site selection and fire response management are usually managed by using a Geographical Information System (GIS), as the tasks in these processes require a high level and amount of integrated geospatial information. Recently, a key element of this integrated geospatial information to emerge is detailed geometrical and semantic information about buildings. In parallel, Building Information Models (BIMs) of today have the capacity for storing and representing such detailed geometrical and semantic information. In this context, the research aimed to investigate the applicability of BIMs in geospatial environment by focusing specifically on these two domains; site selection and fire response management. In the first phase of the research two use case scenarios were developed in order to understand the processes in these domains in a more detailed manner and to establish the scope of a possible software development for transferring information from BIMs into the geospatial environment. In the following phase of the research two data models were developed – a Schema-Level Model View and a geospatial data model. The Schema-Level Model View was used in simplifying the information acquired from the BIM, while the geospatial data model acted as the template for creating physical files and databases in the geospatial environment. Following this, three software components to transfer building information into the geospatial environment were designed, developed, and validated. The first component served for acquiring the building information from the BIM, while the latter two served for transforming the information into the geospatial environment.

The overall research demonstrated that it is possible to transfer (high level of geometric and semantic) information acquired from BIMs into the geospatial environment. The results also demonstrated that BIMs provide a sufficient level and amount of (geometric and semantic) information (about the building) for the seamless automation of data management tasks in the site selection and fire response management processes.

Introduction

Fragmentation is a key feature of the construction industry structure and client base. The traditional nature of the industry involves bringing together multi-disciplines and practitioners in a one-of-a-kind project which requires a tremendous amount of coordination. A typical construction project is extremely complex, involving a variety of organisations and disciplines being brought together for the duration of the project to form the “project team” or “virtual enterprise”. Such nature of the industry has resulted in significant barriers to communication between, the various stakeholders and the software – in use – which in turn has significantly affected the efficiency and performance of the industry. Gallaher et al. [1] indicated that US$15.8B is lost annually in the U.S. Capital Facilities Industry due to the lack of interoperability. In recent years, Building Information Modelling has become an active research area in order to tackle the problems related to interoperability and information integration, and today Building Information Models (BIMs) are promising to be the facilitators of integration, interoperability and collaboration in the future of the construction industry. Over the last decade, the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) developed by International Alliance of Interoperability (IAI, also known as buildingSMART) has matured as a standard BIM in supporting and facilitating interoperability across the various phases of the construction life cycle.

On the other hand, geospatial information and Geographic Information Systems (GISs) are used in various fields related to construction industry and urban management ranging from road design and site selection to cityscape visualisations and emergency response management. GISs play an important role in managing cadastral records that can be regarded as base data for the site selection process. In parallel, recently there have been studies demonstrating the use of GIS in the site selection process. In fact, the main tasks in this process could not become fully automated within a GIS as they require a certain amount of geometric and semantic information to be transferred from building models into the geospatial environment.

On the other hand, today the process of fire response management is commonly managed through a GIS, while a high volume of geometrical and semantic information about buildings needs to be transferred and represented in the geospatial environment in order to successfully manage the overall process (i.e. including indoor navigation).

Until recently the transfer of semantic information and spatial relationships from building models into the geospatial environment could not be accomplished. This was mainly due to two reasons:

• First, there is the lack in the ability of standard CAD models to store semantic information and spatial relationships due to their lack of object oriented data structures. In contrast, BIMs (i.e. IFC as a maturing standard) today are capable of containing geometrical and semantic information about the building elements in an object oriented data structure, where semantic information and spatial relationships can be derived.

• Second, as geospatial information models stored, handled and treated the object geometries in a different manner than building models, they were also inefficient in representing the 3D geometry and insufficient in representing 3D spatial relationships. In fact, there have been recent efforts of representing 3D information, object relationships and semantics in a more effective manner within a GIS.

Both these factors (related to geometry and semantics) made it difficult to transfer information from building models into geospatial environments and to represent buildings within geospatial information models. The problems in transfer and representation of detailed geometric and semantic information about buildings in the geospatial environment prevented an automation of the data management for the systems that support (the management and decision making activities of) the site selection and fire response management processes.

The overall research investigated ways and methods for overcoming these technical barriers in light of new technological developments in both domains, and established a proof-of-concept for demonstrating the transfer of building information into geospatial environment.