Initial Investigations for Modeling Interior Utilities Within 3D Geo Context: Transforming IFC-Interior Utility to CityGML/UtilityNetworkADE

Abstract

3D City models have so far neglected utility networks in built environments, both interior and exterior. Many urban applications, e.g. emergency response or maintenance operations, are looking for such an integration of interior and exterior utility. Interior utility is usually created and maintained using Building Information Model (BIM) systems, while exterior utility is stored, managed and analyzed using GIS. Researchers have suggested that the best approach for BIM/GIS integration is harmonized semantics, which allow formal mapping between the BIM and real world GIS. This paper provides preliminary ideas and directions for how to acquire information from BIM/Industry Foundation Class (IFC) and map it to CityGML utility network Application Domain Extension (ADE). The investigation points out that, in most cases, there is a direct one-to-one mapping between IFC schema and UtilityNetworkADE schema, and only in one case there is one-to-many mapping; related to logical connectivity since there is no exact concept to represent the case in UtilityNetworkADE. Many examples are shown of partial IFC files and their possible translation in order to be represented in UtilityNetworkADE classes.

CityGML – Interoperable semantic 3D city models

“…The relation between BIM and CityGML has been discussed intensively in the last years (Benner et al, 2004;Isikdag and Zlatanova, 2008;Nagel et al, 2009;El-Mekawy, 2010;Hijatzi et al, 2011). Nagel et al (2009) stress the differences between both models with regard to spatial representation and semantics.…”

“…Furthermore, the ADE mechanism can be applied iteratively ('an ADE of an ADE') using object oriented concepts in order to define application schemas at different detail levels. Examples for ADEs are the Noise ADE (Czerwinski et al, 2007) for a noise propagation simulation and mapping extension of CityGML (see Section 4.1.1), the facility management ADE (Bleifuß et al, 2009), the UtilityNetworkADE Hijatzi et al, 2011), the HydroADE (Schulte and Coors, 2008) for hydrographical applications, and the Standard Opening ADE and the URN (ubiquitous network robot technology) ADE, which have both been developed for indoor navigation and mobile robotics tasks, see Section 4.1.3. Furthermore, the new national standard in the Netherlands, which integrates 2D and 3D data (Stoter et al, 2010(Stoter et al, , 2011 will be implemented as CityGML ADE.…”

Simplifying and Exchanging 3D Utility Network Objects Using City Models

“…3D city models are being used in a growing variety of areas of urban management and planning processes such as disaster management, building development, pedestrian navigation and tourism (HIJAZI et al 2011). City models not only represent natural landscapes but also urban objects such as buildings and streets.…”

“…Currently, 3D objects are typically modeled in spatial DBMS using 2D primitives with additional z-coordinates, a method often referred to as 2.5D. Real 3D geometry support is still not available in commercial software and is available only in research settings (HIJAZI et al 2011). Three-dimensional volumetric objects are stored in a database as collections of polygons (boundary representation) representing the surfaces that enclose the shape of the objects.…”

Development of Data Fusion Method Based on Topological Relationships Using IndoorGML Core Module

“…The ConnectEdge feature class defined in the 3D navigable data model (3D NDM), which abstracts the connectivity relationships of a building's internal structure, defines the connectivity relationships of spatial entities such as rooms and corridors, which are the movement paths of people [13]. Data fusion between IFC and CityGML, which are different data formats, was applied using topological representations through a node-link graph [14]. The same types of network-based topological representations utilizing node-link graphs are generated from the two geometry models by defining the topology data generation procedure and necessary attribute information for each geometry model.…”