A review of cloud-based bim technology in the construction sector

Cloud computing technology is regarded as a major transformational force that is causing unprecedented change across the communication and business disciplines. In the architecture, engineering and construction sector, cloud-BIM integration is considered to be the second generation of building information management (BIM) development, and is expected to produce another wave of change across the construction industry. Despite this, few studies to date have attempted to summarise the research literature on cloud-BIM. This paper explores the literature to identify the substantive work on cloud-BIM, particularly regarding building life cycle management, to provide valuable insight for practitioners and to propose avenues for further research. Thirty academic sources, including refereed journal articles and conference papers, were retrieved and analysed in terms of their research focus and nature of application. The review revealed that most cloud-BIM research has focused on the building planning/design and construction stages. The findings suggest that more research should be directed towards operation, maintenance and facility management, energy efficiency and the demolition and deconstruction stages of building life cycle management. Further empirical research on organisational and legal issues, including security, responsibility, liability and model ownership, of the cloud-BIM model is also needed

Building Information Modelling and Asset Management: Semantic and Syntactic Interoperability

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has the potential to improve the design, construction and operation of assets using a standardised machine-readable information model. Despite the rapidly increasing adoption of BIM in design and construction stages, the adoption of BIM for Operation and Maintenance (O&M) is still relatively weak. While there are multifaceted challenges behind that weak adoption, there are recurring themes of the poor data integration between BIM and existing Asset Management (AM) systems and of how to structure BIM models for use in the O&M phase. Reflecting on that interoperability challenge, this research aims to provide a methodology to design, develop and transfer the information required to support O&M from BIM models. To achieve the research aim, firstly a critical review of the literature was undertaken to develop a conceptual framework of the interoperability aspects for BIM implementation in AM. The proposed conceptual framework would facilitate the transfer of information from BIM models to AM tools through the development of a specific Model View Definition (MVD) and a Revit Plug-in. The MVD and Revit Plug-in are developed based on a taxonomy of the required data and based on a cross-mapping between the different standards and guidelines used in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation (AECO) industry. To achieve these aspects, semi-structured interviews and focus group are adapted to identify the required information and an effective cross-mapping between the standards where ontologies are utilised to publish and share machine-readable inter-Linked Data on the web. On the other hand, a prototyping approach is employed for the MVD and the Revit Plug-in development, while a case study method is used for evaluating the developed concepts and prototypes. The developed capabilities can enable facility managers to semantically link the BIM objects to the maintenance records in the Semantic Web during the O&M phase in order to provide a BIM environment without the specific BIM authoring application. Due to the assets’ heterogeneity, this research provides an interoperability solution for the data exchange of assets that consume energy from the BIM systems to the AM systems during the handover stage. Although the stated contributions of this research are anchored on assets that consume energy only, the outputs can still be updated and adapted to cover all of the operable and maintainable building assets

Federated Data Modeling for Built Environment Digital Twins

The digital twin (DT) approach is an enabler for data-driven decision making in architecture, engineering, construction, and operations. Various open data models that can potentially support the DT developments, at different scales and application domains, can be found in the literature. However, many implementations are based on organization-specific information management processes and proprietary data models, hindering interoperability. This article presents the process and information management approaches developed to generate a federated open data model supporting DT applications. The business process modeling notation and transaction and interaction modeling techniques are applied to formalize the federated DT data modeling framework, organized in three main phases: requirements definition, federation, validation and improvement. The proposed framework is developed adopting the cross-disciplinary and multiscale principles. A validation on the development of the federated building-level DT data model for the West Cambridge Campus DT research facility is conducted. The federated data model is used to enable DT-based asset management applications at the building and built environment levels