A State-of-the-Art Review on the Integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS)

Abstract

Abstract:The integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS) has been identified as a promising but challenging topic to transform information towards the generation of knowledge and intelligence. Achievement of integrating these two concepts and enabling technologies will have a significant impact on solving problems in the civil, building and infrastructure sectors. However, since GIS and BIM were originally developed for different purposes, numerous challenges are being encountered for the integration. To better understand these two different domains, this paper reviews the development and dissimilarities of GIS and BIM, the existing integration methods, and investigates their potential in various applications. This study shows that the integration methods are developed for various reasons and aim to solve different problems. The parameters influencing the choice can be summarized and named as "EEEF" criteria: effectiveness, extensibility, effort, and flexibility. Compared with other methods, semantic web technologies provide a promising and generalized integration solution. However, the biggest challenges of this method are the large efforts required at early stage and the isolated development of ontologies within one particular domain. The isolation problem also applies to other methods. Therefore, openness is the key of the success of BIM and GIS integration.

Processing BIM and GIS Models in Practice: Experiences and Recommendations from a GeoBIM Project in The Netherlands

“…As also concluded by Liu et al [17] from Cerovsek [36], the relatively younger concept of BIM and its standard IFC have not satisfied the requirements of standards yet: competitiveness, conformity, and connectivity. BIM has to further develop in this respect, including paying attention to formal definitions for correct geometries, adhering to these and developing functionality to validate models.…”

“…As Liu et al [17] state, the integration can involve semantics and/or geometry, and it can involve the conversion of BIM and GIS data to either a unified model or to the standards of each other (either bidirectional or only one-way). The GeoBIM project instead focused on realising the integration in practice and at the data level.…”

Investigating Integration Capabilities Between Ifc and Citygml Lod3 for 3d City Modelling

“…BIMserver and IFCExplorer convert successfully the IFC Geometry but lack in semantic mapping (Donkers, 2013). Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) applies Extract Transform Load (ETL) as a two-ways conversion tool (Liu, 2017) and supports the reading of IFC as well as writing in CityGML. The converters from FME that are available up to today, are not capable of converting IFC Models to valid CityGML, even though there is an output in gml format.…”

Characterizing 3D City Modeling Projects: Towards a Harmonized Interoperable System

“…On the other hand, common standards and formats (e.g., Collada, OBJ, and FXB) in 3D computer graphics that focus on powerful visualization lack the semantic structures and descriptions used in both IFC and CityGML [4]. Despite numerous research activities the interoperability of 3D city models remains as a challenging task and is still hindered by many issues, such as the ambiguities and differences in modeling, differences in perspectives, missing guidelines, challenges in data conversion and georeferencing, and problems in data quality [4,[23][24][25]27]. So far, very few if any contributions have been published focusing on the integration of 3D GIS, BIM, and computer graphics models.…”

“…The interoperability of 3D city models and especially the integration of 3D GIS and building information (BIM) models has been a significant research question [4,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. One of the aims has been in developing a process where the building data of a 3D city model would be updated using BIM models of new buildings.…”