scholarly journals Data transfer between digital models of built assets and their operation & maintenance systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 469-481
Author(s):  
Kay Rogage ◽  
David Greenwood

The operation and maintenance of built assets is crucial for optimising their whole life cost and efficiency. Historically, however, there has been a general failure in the transfer information between the design-and-construct (D&C) and operate-and-maintain (O&M) phases of the asset lifecycle. The recent steady uptake of digital technologies, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the D&C phase has been accompanied by an expectation that this would enable better transfer of information to those responsible for O&M. Progress has been slow, with practitioners being unsure as to how to incorporate BIM into their working practices. Three types of challenge are identified, related to communication, experience and technology. In examining the last aspect, it appears that a major problem has been that of interoperability between building information models and the many computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) systems in use. The successful and automatic transfer of information from a building model to an FM tool is, in theory, achievable through the medium of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema. However, this relies upon the authoring of the model in terms of how well its structure permits the identification of relevant objects, their relationships and attributes. The testing of over 100 anonymised building models revealed that very few did; prohibiting their straightforward mapping to the maintenance database we had selected for the test. An alternative, hybrid approach was developed using an open-source software toolkit to identify objects by their geometry as well as their classification, thus enabling their automatic transfer. In some cases, manual transfer proved necessary. The implications are that while these problems can be overcome on a case-by-case basis, interoperability between D&C and O&M systems will not become standard until it is accommodated by appropriate and informed authoring of building models.

Author(s):  
Mohamed El-Mekawy ◽  
Anders Östman

The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) are the two most prominent semantic models for the representation of Building Information Models (BIM) and geospatial objects. IFC and CityGML use different terminologies to describe the same domain, and there is a great heterogeneity in their semantics. For bidirectional conversions between these models, an intermediate Unified Building Model (UBM) is proposed that facilitates the transfer of spatial information from IFC to CityGML and vice versa. A unified model in the current study is defined as a superset model that is extended to contain all the features and objects from both IFC and CityGML building models. The conversion is a two-steps process in which a model is first converted to the unified model and then to the target model.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 35-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed El-Mekawy ◽  
Anders Östman

The current cadastral systems are usually based on a 2D parcel maps and land registries having references to different documents. In many countries, the parcel maps, as well as the registries and referenced documents, are represented digitally. The 3D cadastral systems have usually a similar approach, where the descriptions of the 3D components are represented by drawings in PDF format. This article focuses on creating the 3D geometries corresponding to 3D property based on existing 3D building models. The article investigates shortages of IFC and CityGML, the most prominent semantic building models for representation of BIM and geospatial models respectively, as well as a unified building model (UBM) that was developed earlier for modelling complete and real 3D cadastre information system. The result shows that IFC, CityGML, nor the UBM has capabilities for such tasks. The article proposes an extension to the UBM in adding different subtypes to the boundary surfaces above and underground. The extended UBM is then implemented in a case study of a hospital building in Sweden. The implementation shows that by adding the four subtypes “Building Elements Surfaces,” “Digging Surfaces,” “Protecting Area Surfaces,” and “Real Estate Boundary Surfaces” of boundary surfaces, it has become possible to model all the needed surfaces that define 3D cadastral information of a building.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. 355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudi Stouffs ◽  
Helga Tauscher ◽  
Filip Biljecki

The Singapore Government has embarked on a project to establish a three-dimensional city model and collaborative data platform for Singapore. The research herein contributes to this endeavour by developing a methodology and algorithms to automate the conversion of Building Information Models (BIM), in the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data format, into CityGML building models, capturing both geometric and semantic information as available in the BIM models, and including exterior as well as interior structures. We adopt a Triple Graph Grammar (TGG) to formally relate IFC and CityGML, both semantically and geometrically, and to transform a building information model, expressed as an IFC object graph, into a city model expressed as a CityGML object graph. The work pipeline includes extending the CityGML data model with an Application Domain Extension (ADE), which allows capturing information from IFC that is relevant in the geospatial context but at the same time not supported by CityGML in its standard form. In this paper, we elaborate on the triple graph grammar approach and the motivation and roadmap for the development of the ADE. While a fully complete and lossless conversion may never be achieved, this paper suggests that both a TGG and an ADE are natural choices for supporting the conversion between IFC and CityGML.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Eriksson ◽  
Tim Johansson ◽  
Per-Ola Olsson ◽  
Maria Andersson ◽  
Jakob Engvall ◽  
...  

The aim of this paper is to present a proposal for a national building standard in Sweden. We define requirements for the proposed standard, e.g., it should support development of 3D city models, connect to building information models (BIM) and national registers and be based on a national classification system for the urban environment. Based on these requirements we develop an Application Domain Extension (ADE) of the building model in the proposed CityGML 3.0 standard denoted CityGML Sve-Test. CityGML 3.0 includes several new features of interest, e.g., the space concept, enhanced possibilities to convert data, and to link to other standards. In our study we create test data according to CityGML Sve-Test and evaluate it against the requirements. It is shown that BIM models (in Industry Foundation Classes, IFC, format) can be converted to CityGML Sve-Test and that a classification system facilitates this conversion. The CityGML Sve-Test dataset can be used to increase the automation level in building permissions checking and a related study shows that CityGML 3.0 has capabilities to link to legal information and be a base for 3D cadastral index maps. Based on our experience, we suggest that the national building standard should conform to international standards and, if possible, include a classification system. The exchange format (GML, JSON etc.) might change, but to be based on a standardized data model ensures harmonized structures and concepts.


CivilEng ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-192
Author(s):  
Alcinia Zita Sampaio ◽  
Augusto Martins Gomes

The building information modelling (BIM) methodology supports collaborative works, based on the centralization of all information in a federated BIM model and on an efficient level of interoperability between BIM-based platforms. Concerning the structure design, the interoperability capacity of the most used software presents limitations that must be identified and alternative solutions must be proposed. This study analyzes the process of transfer of structure models between modeling and structure analysis tools. Distinct building cases were performed in order to recognize the type of limitations verified in the transfer processes concerning two-way data flow between several software. The study involves the modeling software ArchiCAD 2020, Revit 2020, and AECOsim 2019 and the structure analyzes tools SAP 2020, Robot 2020, and ETABS 22020. The transfer processes are realized in two ways: using the native data format; using a universal standard data transfer, the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) format. The level of maturity of BIM in structure design is still relatively low, caused essentially by interoperability problems, but despite the limitations detected, this study shows throughout the development of several building case, that the methodology has clear advantages in the development of the structure project.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
Junxiang Zhu ◽  
Peng Wu

Previous geo-referencing approaches for building information modeling (BIM) models can be problematic due to: (a) the different interpretations of the term ‘geo-referencing’, (b) the insufficient consideration of the placement hierarchy of the industry foundation classes (IFCs), and (c) the misunderstanding that a common way to embed spatial reference information for IFC is absent. Therefore, the objective of this study is to (1) clarify the meaning of geo-referencing in the context of BIM/GIS data integration, and (2) develop a common geo-referencing approach for IFC. To achieve the goal, a systematic and thorough investigation into the IFC standard was conducted to assess the geo-referencing capability of IFC. Based on the investigation, a geo-referencing approach was established using IFC entities that are common in different IFC versions, which makes the proposed approach common to IFC. Such a geo-referencing approach supports automatic geo-referencing that would facilitate the use of BIM models in GIS, e.g., for the construction of digital twins.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Daniela Pasini ◽  
Angelo Luigi Camillo Ciribini ◽  
Bruno Daniotti

Considering the remarkable shift that the digitalisation is nowadays bringing about in the building sector, the paper focuses on how the great amount of data collected around assets is changing the way buildings are operated, particularly for what concerns innovation on products, processes and technologies. By establishing a connection between as-designed virtual models and as-delivered physical assets, the paper presents methods and tools based on information management and developed for assessing building behaviours in operation and for defining control strategies for satisfying user needs. The research aims to investigate how the building process could benefit from the availability of multi-faceted information collected in real time (e.g. through sensors) during the operational stages of buildings. Digitally-enabled practices and technologies have been developed and tested for improving a data-driven asset management, by enriching Building Information Models through data gathered through Building Management Systems, according to the Industry Foundation Classes schema.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (22) ◽  
pp. 8287
Author(s):  
Nicola Moretti ◽  
Xiang Xie ◽  
Jorge Merino ◽  
Justas Brazauskas ◽  
Ajith Kumar Parlikad

Digital Twins (DT) are powerful tools to support asset managers in the operation and maintenance of cognitive buildings. Building Information Models (BIM) are critical for Asset Management (AM), especially when used in conjunction with Internet of Things (IoT) and other asset data collected throughout a building’s lifecycle. However, information contained within BIM models is usually outdated, inaccurate, and incomplete as a result of unclear geometric and semantic data modelling procedures during the building life cycle. The aim of this paper is to develop an openBIM methodology to support dynamic AM applications with limited as-built information availability. The workflow is based on the use of the IfcSharedFacilitiesElements schema for processing the geometric and semantic information of both existing and newly created Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) objects, supporting real-time data integration. The methodology is validated using the West Cambridge DT Research Facility data, demonstrating good potential in supporting an asset anomaly detection application. The proposed workflow increases the automation of the digital AM processes, thanks to the adoption of BIM-IoT integration tools and methods within the context of the development of a building DT.


2019 ◽  
pp. 849-864
Author(s):  
Giulia Carbonari ◽  
Spyridon Stravoravdis ◽  
Christine Gausden

The use of Building information modelling for the design and construction phase of a building has been thoroughly looked into by researchers and practitioners and there is evidence to support that it is beneficial for reducing cost, time and improving communication. Yet the potential use of BIM for the operational and management phase (Facilities management), besides maintenance schedules and equipment information and location, is still not clearly identified. The UK Government, institutional clients and major private owners are now demanding for BIM for new construction and major refurbishment but given that 70-75% of the current UK building stock will still be in use in 2050, a significant part of the existing facilities will not have an information model till the next major refurbishment, creating a major gap in the built environment. This paper presents a new framework aimed at creating information models for facilities management requiring minimal BIM skills and discusses the impact that models created for the operational stage would have on the whole life cycle of a building.


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