=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1963/paper557
|storemode=property
|title=Integrating Building Information Models with Authoritative Irish Geospatial Information
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1963/paper557.pdf
|volume=Vol-1963
|authors=Kris McGlinn,Christophe Debruyne,Lorraine McNerney,Declan O'Sullivan
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/semweb/McGlinnDMO17
}}
==Integrating Building Information Models with Authoritative Irish Geospatial Information==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1963/paper557.pdf
Integrating Building Information Models with Authorita-
tive Irish Geospatial Information
Kris McGlinn[1], Christophe Debruyne[1], Lorraine McNerney[2]
and Declan O’Sullivan[1]
1
ADAPT, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
2
Ordnance Survey Ireland, Dublin 8, Ireland
kris.mcglinn@scss.tcd.ie
Abstract. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a key enabler to support in-
tegration of building data and is an important aspect to support a wide range of
use cases, related to building navigation, control, sustainability, etc. Open BIM
faces several challenges related to standardization, data interdependency, data
access, and security. This means that there is often limited availability of BIM
models. In Ireland, the Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) has a substantial dataset,
called Prime2, which includes not only GIS data (polygon footprint, geodetic
coordinate), but also additional building specific data (form and function). In
this paper, an extension of an applied and tested methodology for uplifting GIS
data into RDF is demonstrated for interlinking to a well-established BIM stan-
dard in the Architecture, Engineering and Constructionindustry called Industry
Foundation Classes, using geolocation. This builds on initial work interlinking
OSi building data with DBpedia. By interlinking building data in this way and
making it available to query over, new insights and knowledge about buildings
in Ireland can be made. This is an important step towards the iterative integra-
tion of ever more complex BIM models into the wider web of data to support
the aforementioned use cases.
Keywords:GeoSPARQL, Linked Data, Interlinking, Building Information
Modelling, Geographic Information System, Ordnance Survey Ireland
1 Introduction
Access to reliable structured data plays a key role in supporting existing and future
services for managing smart and sustainable buildings and cities [1]. Building Infor-
mation Modeling (BIM) has been identified as a key enabler to support integration of
building data not only within the buildings life cycle (BLC), which includes its de-
sign, construction, operation and re-design, as well as demolition and recycling [2],
but also with other data sources, such as those related to geolocation, people and their
behavior, weather, energy, etc. [3]. The potential to link datasets can therefore provide
a source of enrichment for the data within a BIM.
The Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi, Ireland’s national mapping agency) developed
a spatial data storage model known as Prime2, which is an object-oriented model im-
plemented using the Oracle Spatial and Graph database technology. The system cur-
2
rently holds information of over 45,000,000 spatial objects (road segments, fences,
etc.), of which some have more than one representation. The Prime2 data base has
3,532,263 building objects which include a geodetic coordinate as well as a 2D poly-
gon representing the footprint of the building, along with other information such as
the buildings form (e.g. Terraced Building) and function (e.g. Residence) and also its
current life cycle stage (e.g. In use). This data meets some basic requirements for
BIM. For example: how to handle multiple building representations, geometries and
how to combine this with authoritative geospatial datasets. Crucially, it provides a
sound basis for authoritative building data in Ireland.
The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), an ISO PAS standard (ISO 2013) devel-
oped by buildingSmart [13], is the leading standard for BIM in the Architecture, En-
gineering and Construction (AEC) community. IFC is also the only BIM currently an
ISO PAS standard (ISO 2013), and so remains a primary candidate for BIM. IFC is a
non-proprietary data model which addresses several core data domains required for
building AEC processes (architecture, structural analysis, control, etc.), enabling in-
formation to be passed between different stakeholders across the BLC. In practice,
IFC has yet to make the impact expected of it. One major barrier to the use of IFC is
its complexity. Often it is difficult for new software developers, unfamiliar with the
schema, to access simple things such as a buildings geolocation, without an under-
standing of the IFC express schema which uses a complex set of relationships to as-
sign longitude and latitude to an IfcSite. For a software developer who just wants to
declare a building with a geodetic location, this can be off putting, resulting in the
development of ad hoc models with alignments to IFC an afterthought.
This paper demonstrate the use of an applied and tested methodology for uplifting
the OSi data into RDF and explore how this data, using Linked Data [23], can be a
basis for interlinking to the IFC standard. The paper proposes that this approach to
uplifting data can provide new knowledge and insights about buildings in Ireland and
the integration of authoritative OSi geospatial data is an important step towards the
iterative integration of ever more complex BIM models into the wider web of data.
2 Design and Implementation
The OSi’s authoritative geospatial data has been converted into GeoSPARQL 1 and
made available through GeoHive (data.geohive.ie). GeoSPARQL is an Open Geospa-
tial Consortium (OGC) standard which not only defines a vocabulary for representing
geospatial data on the Semantic Web, but also specifies an extension to the SPARQL
query language for processing that geospatial data. In [6][7] the uplifting and linking
of the OSi data has been conducted and some initial linking between DBpedia,
through geolocation, demonstrated. This paper demonstrates the linking of the OSi
data with IFC, specifically ifcOWL[8], which is now an official standard in buil-
dingSMART[9], thereby making it possible to access and query large BIM data sets.
IfcOWL transforms IFC defined in the EXPRESS schema into OWL. Our pro-
1
HYPERLINK "http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards”
3
posed linking is supported by a geodetic coordinate defined in IfcSite (lat and lon).
IFC maintains a complex set of relations to store data about geometry and placement,
leading to large numbers of triples generated when converted to RDF [10]. Creating
SPARQL queries to traverse the lists expressed in RDF is therefore not practical for
constructing new RDF graphs. The conversion process of IFC from an express STEP
file into OWL makes use of Jena libraries, the source code of which has been made
freely available2. The approach taken here is to therefore introduce an additional step
during conversion from STEP to OWL, which takes as an input the ifcOWL model
and injects a new relationship geo:hasGeometry to IfcSite to represent the lon and lat
as a WKT point, building on the analysis and recommendation made by Pauwels et al.
[10]. This code is available here: https://github.com/kmcglinn/IfcOwl2IfcOwlGeoloc.
Fig. 1 Linking IfcSite to OSi building using geodetic coordinate
Fig. 1 shows the ifcOWL representation of lat and long, which requires a list of
four integer values (deg, mins, secs, fraction) stored as triples each with a hasList and
hasContents property, and its equivalent representation in GeoSPARQL, which re-
quires one triple asWKT to represent the same list. Listing 1 below this figure, de-
monstrates how this appears in a conversion of the openly available smallhouse.ttl
file2. Fig. 1 then demonstrate a GeoSPARQL query (viewed in yasgui.com), using
geof:nearby, which will return all geometries near a given point, allowing queires
over an IFC model, which includes data on structure (walls, windows, etc.) control
systems, electrical systems, etc. and OSi Buildings, combining the two data sets.
3 Conclusion and Future Work
By combining OSi data and IFC, a much richer set of data becomes available for que-
rying BIM. This approach also supports more complex queries over multiple data
sets, for example DBpedia[7]. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a method for query-
ing large data sets of BIM and BIM related data, based upon the authoritative geome-
tries which are available through the OSi. Potentially, agreements could be developed
between OSi and IFC model owners, whereby queries could return subsets of open
2
HYPERLINK “http://openbimstandards.org/standards/ifcowl/”
4
data, along with licensing information for data which is considered to have some
commercial value. Future work with IFC will explore the conversion of IFC geome-
tries of floors and spaces into GeoSPARQL, thus enabling the full power of geospa-
tial functions for SPARQL queries, such as nearby, within, touches, etc. which can
support queries related to energy efficiency, navigation, building control, etc.
PREFIX geo: .
PREFIX ifcowl: .
PREFIX inst: .
inst:IfcSite_2421 aifcowl:IfcSite ;
ifcowl:compositionType_IfcSpatialStructureElementifcowl:ELEMENT ;
ifcowl:refLatitude_IfcSiteinst:IfcCompoundPlaneAngleMeasure_3211 ;
ifcowl:refLongitude_IfcSiteinst:IfcCompoundPlaneAngleMeasure_3219 ;
geo:hasGeometry .
geo:asWKT"POINT (-71.335194702 42.2130344238)"^^geo:wktLiteral .
Listing 1: Snippet of Simplehouse.ttl with added GeoSPARQL geodetic placement. A number
of properties are not displayed here for IfcSite to reduce size.
Acknowledgements.The ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technology is funded
under the SFI Research Centres Programme (13/RC/2106) and is co-funded under the
European Regional Development Fund.
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