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There is a growing interest in the interoperability between building information models (BIM) and geographic information systems (GIS). BIM can provide rich information for the generation of a GIS model, while the analysis tools in GIS can be used by BIM applications, such as the management of material supply chains and site selection. A comprehensive integration of the BIM and GIS is critical for interoperability between the two domains. However, many integration methods including manual inspection of complex and heterogeneous model files are time-consuming and have weak generalisation capability. This paper proposes a new linguistic-based semantic mapping method that uses the letter trigram-based word hashing method (WHSMM) to construct the feature vector, and then maps the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) schemas through text mining techniques at schema level. The semantic mapping precision and recall obtained using WHSMM are compared with those of another linguistic-based method. The mapping result shows that performance of WHSMM is superior to that of another method in most cases. Therefore, the mapping candidates of WHSMM are used to transform the IFC datasets into CityGML models. The transformation results show that most of mapping candidates of the WHSMM can be used to practical data integration. The semantic mapping method presented in this paper can help map the IFC and CityGML schemas by effectively reducing the search space of the manual mapping method.

Different modeling softwares have different functions. They have their own various advantages in the fields of software architecture, operation interface, attribute definition and description, view presentation, supported file format, report generation or construction drawing. In the process of collaborative design for complex structures or large projects, most designers choose their familiar tools to create the products. Because different softwares have always different definitions of object attributes and file formats, they are not compatible that makes it not easy to integrate the works constructed by different designers. This is a problem of what has since become common in the process of project collaboration, so how to integrate heterogeneous models is vitally important for constructing architectural information. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), an Open Information Exchange Standard for Building Information Modeling (BIM), provides document format specification and structure description method. It aims to achieve fast and high-fidelity model construction. This paper proposes a method to integrate heterogeneous materials and models constructed by different softwares, transform formats and attributes with IFC standards, and then integrate and display results with ArchiCAD software. The integrity and repair feasibility of information exchange in the process of conversion are the main topics of this paper.

Research in the field of automated systems for verification of information models has been conducted for many years by specialists from different countries. A serious success was achieved in Norway, Singapore, Australia and the United States in this direction. As a result, there are several approaches to obtain machine-readable representations of standards, which, however, have a number of disadvantages. In this article the algorithm of formation of rules of verification of information models of construction objects on the basis of language of modeling of rules is considered. RuleML was chosen as the de facto standard for the presentation of rules in any industry. The advantage of the proposed solution is that it is based on open standards in the field of presentation and exchange of information models (Industry Foundation Classes, IFC) and rules (RuleML). The proposed form of translation of the requirements of building standards in machine-readable rules is simple and intuitive for subject matter specialists, is crossplatform, amenable to adjustment and expansion, can be integrated with other databases of rules. The use of this representation of requirements for a construction project can become another standard that allows to improve interaction for the implementation of international construction projects. A further direction of research is the development of methods of verification of information models, which is based on this algorithm and the implementation of the appropriate software system.

The availability of detailed virtual 3D building models including representations of indoor elements, allows for a wide number of applications requiring effective exploration and navigation functionality. Depending on the application context, users should be enabled to focus on specific Objects-of-Interests (OOIs) or important building elements. This requires approaches to filtering building parts as well as techniques to visualize important building objects and their relations. For it, this paper explores the application and combination of interactive rendering techniques as well as their semantically-driven configuration in the context of 3D indoor models.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is becoming a standard tool for information management throughout the life cycle of a construction project. Elements in BIM are designed in a Cartesian coordinate system (Engineering system) with no direct relation to the project's geographic location. Accurate georeferencing of BIM data is required both for construction and integration with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), as improperly treated or neglected scale distortions can lead to costly delays in construction as problems requiring ad hoc solutions may arise on site Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is an open BIM standard developed by buildingSMART, and the current version IFC 4 has recently been extended with IFC Alignment, which includes support for alignment geometries used for infrastructure design. This paper investigates the geographic capabilities of IFC 4 and its extension IFC Alignment. The study identifies a lack of support for non-uniform scale factors and object-specific map projections as the largest weaknesses.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) could provide detailed 3D building models to Geographic Information Systems (GISs) for the emerging studies in smart cities/digital cities. During information exchange, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) containing rich building information is the most used data format in BIM. However, GIS does not the capacity to directly consume the data in IFC due to data incompatibility between the two systems. Consequently, IFC files have to be transformed into a format that is accessible to GIS. Shapefile is one of them, given its popularity in geospatial science. This study tests the different formats and methods for transforming IFC to shapefile, assesses their performance, in order to offer a ranking, from which better decisions could be made when choosing an appropriate intermediate data format. The results show direct transformation from IFC to shapefile retained the most geometry and semantic information. If the direct transformation method does not work in some cases, 3DS, VRML, or SKP could be used as alternatives to retain most of the information, while DWG, DXF, KML, and KMZ should not be considered due to their poor performance in the test.

Buildings become constantly smarter during the last decades. Using sensors, varying information of the building environment, e.g. temperature, energy consumption or building utilization, can be measured and used to improve the user experience. The Internet of Thing (IoT) paradigm increases the number of sources of information from which collect data. However, to store data coming from different sensor systems is still a challenging task. The paper presents an approach for the linkage of sensor data with a Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based building model using the open data format Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). First, based on a research about sensor data and Open Data Models (ODM), the state of the art of possibilities storing sensor data with ODM is described, current advantages and disadvantages are outlined. As an example of the current use of sensor data, the eLUX Lab at the University of Brescia is described. The eLUX lab offers an approach for the connection of sensor data with BIM models. Its usability was proved in case studies and shows, that it is a solid working concept of a static connection. Nevertheless, it can be improved in some aspects. Apart from these optimization opportunities, the concept seems to be well thought out. Thus, it will serve as a basis for the following composed dynamic approach. Especially, the sensor objects of the building information model are well suited for the continued use. With focus on the usage of open data formats, a new dynamic method of linkage using a server platform is developed. Therefore, requirements for the programming of an agent accessing the server and saving the latest sensor data into the IFC file are set. Finally, the general suitability of IFC for the storage and usage of sensor data is described and prospects for the further developments of this approach are given.

In this paper, we present the NetFlinCS framework, which allows a fast and effective development of compute-intensive interactive applications for mobile devices using hybrid cloud technologies. In addition, we show its advantages by using the proposed technology to build a context-based detection and surveillance application for construction sites, which aggregates all relevant data during architecture planning and the construction process for documentation and later use in facility management. The NetFlinCS framework enables rich Mixed Reality techniques like sensor fusion over multiple mobile devices or AI-based recognition as well as the integration of databases to enable an automatic detection of discrepancies based on common tracking technologies. The device uses the location awareness to process the camera stream in the context of the local planning data. To reduce the client's workload as well as for better scalability and to enable the heavy use of machine learning techniques, we use a hybrid cloud environment that consists of all available servers and clients to outsource expensive calculations. The hybrid cloud backend provides different services like machine learning based segmentation, inpainting, and scene classification that support navigation, video processing, and error estimation in real-time. By deeply integrating standard data formats like the Industry Foundation Classes standard and Building Information Modeling it is possible to compare these databases with tracking data to detect and localize discrepancies over the whole life cycle of a building, from planning data (blueprints, architectural models, etc.) up to the real building.

The checking process of the building design with building regulations or codes is a time-consuming and error prone process. The automation of code compliance checking process has been explored since 1960s and becoming more vigorous with the emergence of Building Information Modeling (BIM). A neutral format, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) which is developed under BIM platform had led to better collaboration and information exchange throughout BIM software and development of the checking system. Generally, the structure of an automated system consists of rule interpretation stage, building model preparation stage, rule execution stage and rule reporting stage. Rule interpretation stage is the most vital and complex stage. In interpreting the rules, various techniques have been investigated and applied to employ comprehensive and accurate checking process on the building designs which are mainly in IFC format. The most common techniques used are by utilizing existing software such as Solibri Model Checker, establishing a plug-in application, adopting object-based approach, logical approach and ontological approach. This paper provides a highlight and review on previous studies which successfully employed the appropriate techniques in interpreting the rules for checking purposes. This will subsequently assist future research on this area and create more astounding code compliance checking system.

As a neutral and open data format, the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) specification is used to describe and exchange information within the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. It is the international standard for openBIM. However, the lack of semantic information greatly hinders its application. Ontology technology, on the other hand, can be used to supplement the semantic information to facilitate intelligent uses such as information integration and ontology reasoning. This paper reviews the current research development of ontology technology in the area of building information modeling (BIM) and proposes an intelligent application framework based on BIM and ontology. Key issues for its implementation are also discussed.

Building Information Management systems have started to leverage new kinds of digital information infrastructures that integrate activities related to design, budgeting, scheduling, analysis, material management, and human resources. Companies implementing such systems have no other option today than exchanging information among themselves in a proper and efficient way. Industry foundation classes (IFCs) provide useful information structures for such a data sharing. However they do not specify how to capture, exchange and synchronize the information between distinct entities (i.e. information systems like sensors, servers, smart products…) throughout the building lifecycle. Accordingly, this paper investigates existing messaging protocols in order to identify which one is the most appropriate for supporting building lifecycle management; i.e a flexible protocol that provides sufficiently generic communication interfaces. A platform set up on a university campus based on the selected messaging protocol is then presented. Within this context, the research agenda that should be pursued to develop new techniques and algorithms for optimizing the building energy management is announced.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data model are used widely in construction to increase communication and team efficiencies while working toward a building construction management. This research presents a semantic reasoning framework using expert system development program language JESS for reasoning under specific ontology. This paper describes the structure of the proposed framework and its advantages in integrating BIM data sources. This allows the machine to understand the meaning of schema and detect error of those 3D models. This paper explores the idea of evacuation and 3D model code-checking automation.

This research presents the Ok — build expert system for automatic detection of norm compliance in the construction domain. In the first step, the plan of the building, exported by the CAD tools using the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard, is converted as Jess facts. Then, the construction is checked against the active regulatory norms represented as Jess rules.

Building information modeling (BIM) establishes a rich data model over the life cycle of a building. The information gathered during the architectural design phase, engineering, and construction serves as up-to-date processing base for facility and building management during a building's operation phase. Recent projects include more and more building automation system related modeling details to provide accurate product data information. This paper discusses enhancing BIM with process communication data, taking the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) as BIM data format example and the Local Operating Network (LON) as building automation control network with functional profiles and network variable (NV) mechanism.

The paper presents an implementation of a user interface for the capture and refinement of CFD data for building energy analysis (CaRCA) that allows interaction with building data in a context and language familiar to the CFD engineer. This is made possible by the use of an International Standards Organisation - standard for the exchange of product model data (ISO-STEP) compliant building product model (BPM). The BPM used is the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) developed industry foundation classes (IFC) schema. This allows early introduction of the CFD engineer to the building lifecycle and a method for recorded validation of CFD predictions.

The upcoming next generation of the Internet, often referred to as the semantic Web, will bring a lot of new technologies, one of which is the Web ontology language (OWL). One feature of this language is to support interoperability between software applications, including Web services and intelligent agents. Another technology to bring interoperability between software programs is ISO-10303 Standard Exchange of Product data (STEP). The industry foundation classes (IFC) have been developed as a building information model for the building and construction industry using technology from STEP. Converting IFC to OWL can be done on different ways. A unidirectional conversion from an IFC to an OWL has been developed for research purposes. The developed prototype converts not all the IFC data to OWL but supports the search for a more appropriate mapping. As the conversion is not straightforward, reengineering the building model to gain more advantages of functionality offered by OWL has to be investigated.