Development of Semantically Rich 3D Retrofit Models

Abstract

The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has gained considerable interest in new build projects. However, its use in existing assets has been limited to geometric models utilising Point Cloud Data (PCD) as the primary source of data. The inclusion of non-geometrical data from distributed sources in the geometric model to make it semantically rich has been fraught with considerable challenges. In this paper, an approach is proposed to provide a framework for generating semantically-rich parametric models for existing assets. While the geometric information like length, width, area, and volume can be extracted from a PCD, non-geometric data may need to be appended to this for generating genuinely semantically rich models. The Comma Separated Values (CSV) format is utilised to represent the data that can be extracted from PCDs. In addition, the non-geometric information derived from other sources is appended to the CSV file. Subsequently, the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data is generated from the data presented in the CSV files. RDF is a commonly used Semantic Web technology for storing, sharing, and reusing information on the Web. The RDF data is then used to create the IFC data model by translating RDF into IFC. The IFC file is used to generate 3D BIM by importing it into any IFC-compliant application. The proposed approach was validated on one part of the Edinburgh castle, a relatively complex historical building. The choice of building for validating the approach was driven by technical as well as pragmatic reasons. Technically, the approach will have proven its robustness if it could be shown to work for a complex rather than a relatively simple building. Pragmatically, the authors had access to data on Edinburgh Castle due to an ongoing partnership with the Historic Environment Scotland (HES). However, as a result of the validation process, it is suggested that the proposed approach should be applicable to any existing building.

Application of semantic Web ontologies for the improvement of information exchange in existing buildings

“…COBie cannot be utilised in BIM-driven applications for generating BIM models as it cannot transfer geometries (Farias et al, 2015;Gui, Wang, Qiu, Gui, & Deconinck, 2019). On the other hand, the IFC data model cannot present all kinds of non-geometrical data involved in BIM models (Sadeghineko et al, 2019;Sadeghineko & Kumar, 2020). In this regard, commercial BIM applications largely suffer from the limitations of exchanging data and indirectly capturing 3D models of buildings, particularly existing assets that do not have an appropriate model.…”

“…In this regard, commercial BIM applications largely suffer from the limitations of exchanging data and indirectly capturing 3D models of buildings, particularly existing assets that do not have an appropriate model. Hence, some of the information that cannot be presented through existing information exchange standards and formats is inevitably stored in different file formats outside the model, such as PDF, 2D paper-based CAD drawings, and Excel spreadsheets (Sadeghineko & Kumar, 2020).…”

“…IFC can be considered the most well known and practical standard used for information exchange purposes between BIM-driven applications (Pauwels et al, 2011;Kumar, 2016).However, due to some of the limitations and implications of the IFC data model (Uggla & Horemuz, 2018;Molinero Sánchez, Gómez-Blanco Pontes, & Rivas López, 2019) on capturing all kinds of non-geometrical data, commercial BIM software largely suffer from the limitations of exchanging data and indirectly capturing semantically enriched 3D models of existing assets. In real-world projects, the information that cannot be combined with the BIM models is inevitably stored in different data formats outside the model, which makes data manipulation, information exchange, and interoperability processes ineffective and inefficient (Sadeghineko & Kumar, 2020).…”

“…Various schemas like ifcOWL (Pauwels & Terkaj, 2016), ifcJSON (Afsari, Eastman, & Castro-Lacouture, 2017), s e l f -a r c h i v i n g v e r s i o n and COBieOWL (Farias et al, 2015) have been developed as a second alternative schema for distributing data on the Web effectively and efficiently by using semantic web technologies, in particular the Web Ontology Language (OWL). However, they are not designed to generate BIM models, and available BIM applications currently do not support such schemas (Sadeghineko & Kumar, 2020;Volk et al, 2014). For example, ifcOWL is predominantly created from an existing IFC data model by converting IFC into OWL ontology by implementing the IFC-to-RDF (Pauwels et al, 2011) and EXPRESS-to-OWL (Pauwels & Terkaj, 2016) algorithms.…”

“…An approach has been developed in Sadeghineko & Kumar, 2020 to address the challenges and limitations of generating BIM models from PCD. The proposed framework focuses on generating semantically enriched 3D retrofit models from PCD by utilising Resource Description Framework (RDF) as semantic web technology and standard.…”