Building Information Modeling – Application, Cooperation, Data Integration, and Data Management

Summary
The application of Building Information Modeling (BIM) within the lifecycle of buildings requires new patterns of thought that are very different from conventional engineering approaches: An important issue when using BIM is the consistent digital planning being characterized by the cooperation of the human individuals and parties involved in the planning process. Also, the model quality and the data quality of the building information model (Figure 1) are of interest. This research project investigates concepts and models for the data integration and data management using proprietary and open building information models, specifically the Industry Foundation Classes (ISO 16739: 2013). In particular, concepts and methods for automated testing and assessing model and data quality will be developed in order to ensure quality of the models considered. In this context, technologies enabling user-friendly data extraction (so called "BIM queries") will be investigated. Another goal of this research project is to facilitate the cooperative data exchange, focusing on state-of-the-art BIM servers (or comparable technologies). Finally, due to the heterogeneity of geometric modeling techniques commonly employed in practice, the use of open BIM data formats (such as IFC) is usually prone to data loss when exchanging digital information. Thus, another goal of this research project is the development of concepts supporting parametric geometry modeling based on building information models.