Opportunities and challenges for GeoBIM in Europe: developing a building permits use-case to raise awareness and examine technical interoperability challenges

The integration of geoinformation with BIM (GeoBIM) is critical to underpin solutions to many city-related challenges. However, to achieve an effective integration it is necessary to consider not only data and technical options but also current practice and users’ needs. This paper describes work carried out within the EuroSDR-GeoBIM project to address this challenge. After investigating potential uses for GeoBIM and existing challenges, we address a planning permits for buildings use case, to help bridging the gap between theory and practice. The resultshighlights a high-level harmonised workflow envisaging the use of GeoBIM information for automating the planning permits process.Urban Data Scienc

THE ISPRS-EUROSDR GEOBIM BENCHMARK 2019

Standardised data formats and data models are essential for data integration and interoperability, which in turn adds value to data by allowing its reuse in multiple contexts. For this reason, in recent years extensive efforts have been focused on standards development. When representing the built environment, 3D city models and Building Information Models are particularly relevant, and their integration is now required to underpin use cases that cover the full life-cycle of a built asset, including design and planning as well as operations and management, and to support legal applications such as cadastral systems. For those kinds of data, CityGML by the Open Geospatial Consortium and Industry Foundation Classes by buildingSMART are the most popular reference standards. However, many users report, often through informal channels, the difficulties of working with these formats. This paper summarizes the outcomes of the GeoBIM Benchmark 2019, a scientific initiative funded by ISPRS and EuroSDR to collect insights into the most relevant issues encountered in the management of CityGML and IFC within existing software. Alongside data management (import, visualisation, analysis, export) problems, issues of particular consequence in terms of integration relate to georeferencing IFC files and the conversions among the two kinds of formats and models. Thus, the benchmark was designed to explore these tasks in available software. Following analysis of the benchmark results, a key outcome is the impossibility to find clear patterns in the behaviour of tools, which consequently means there is no consistency in the implementation of standards. Although the results could seem disappointing, the criticality in managing these standards as they are was described and this awareness can be the starting point for further research or further standards development. Finally, this project was useful to gather a wide community around this topic, and the discussion about the GeoBIM-related issues was definitely pushed. Urban Data Scienc

Trained innate immunity modulates osteoblast and osteoclast differentiation

Macrophages are key regulators in bone repair and regeneration. Recent studies have shown that long-term epigenetic changes and metabolic shifts occur during specific immune training of macrophages that affect their functional state, resulting in heightened (trained) or reduced (tolerant) responses upon exposure to a second stimulus. This is known as innate immune memory. Here, we study the impact of macrophages’ memory trait on osteoblast differentiation of human mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSCs) and osteoclast differentiation. An in vitro trained immunity protocol of monocyte-derived macrophages was employed using inactivated Candida albicans and Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) to induce a ‘trained’ state and Pam3CSK4 (PAM) and Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) to induce a ‘tolerance’ state. Macrophages were subsequently cocultured with hMSCs undergoing osteogenic differentiation during either resting (unstimulated) or inflammatory conditions (restimulated with LPS). Alkaline phosphatase activity, mineralization, and cytokine levels (TNF, IL-6, oncostatin M and SDF-1α) were measured. In addition, macrophages underwent osteoclast differentiation. Our findings show that trained and tolerized macrophages induced opposing results. Under resting conditions, BCG-trained macrophages enhanced ALP levels (threefold), while under inflammatory conditions this was found in the LPS-tolerized macrophages (fourfold). Coculture of hMSCs with trained macrophages showed mineralization while tolerized macrophages inhibited the process under both resting and inflammatory conditions. While osteoclast differentiation was not affected in trained-macrophages, this ability was significantly loss in tolerized ones. This study further confirms the intricate cross talk between immune cells and bone cells, highlighting the need to consider this interaction in the development of personalized approaches for bone regenerative medicine. Graphical Abstract: (Figure presented.).Biomaterials & Tissue Biomechanic

Integrating expertises and ambitions for data-driven digital building permits: The EUNET4DBP

The digitalization of the process for building permit (involving the use of 3D information systems) is seen as a priority in a wide part of the world. Since it is a very multidisciplinary use case, involving a variety of stakeholders tackling complex issues and topics, some of them joined their efforts and skills in the European Network for Digital Building Permit. The initial activity of the network, after a review of on-going experiences, was a workshop to share knowledge about the topics involved and to identify the main ambitions of the network with respect to three pillars (i.e. Process - Rules and Requirements - Technology) and the related requirements. It was achieved through a collective brainstorming activity guided by digital tools, whose results were further analysed in a post-processing phase. Such results are presented in this paper and will be the base for planning the future network activity. Urban Data Scienc

GeoBIM benchmark: ISPRS Scientific initiative 2019 - Final report

In both research and practice, data interoperability is considered essential to support a rising number of applications that need data from different domains. Therefore, standard data formats and models are developed by standardization organizations such as Open Geospatial Consortium (for the Geo domain)and buildingSMART (for the BIM domain). However, from practical experiences, problems were noticed (standards implementation and use of standardized data). Nevertheless, it was hard to discover what the most serious issues were and what was their reason.For GeoBIM (integration of geoinformation with building information models), the CityGML standard, by Open Geospatial Consortium, and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) by buildingSMART, were considered and tested in this initiative. A sample of datasets in the two formats were provided. External volunteers were asked to import the datasets in tools supposed to support the standards, check relevant aspects for the use of data (geometry, semantics, georeferencing, functionalities), report on them, and re-export the datasets in the standard format. Other tasks were intended to describe and test georeferencing procedures for IFC models and conversion tools between CityGML and IFC.This benchmark was useful to gather best practices and data about the functioning of useful tools to manage standardized data. Common behaviors and potential problems were pointed out and the discussion about the use of standards was further pushed.Urban Data Scienc