LoD2BIM: A New Workflow for reconstructing and converting LoD2 Model to Information-rich IFC Model for Existing Building

Numerous existing buildings in Germany lack corresponding BIM models. Advanced analysis and visualization purposes, including indoor navigation, energy demand simulations, and building materials recycling on these buildings presents significant challenges, as only Level of Detail 2 (LoD2) models provided by local housing authorities, along with architectural drawings and textual descriptions of the internal structures, are available. This paper proposes a semi-manual workflow, LoD2BIM, to facilitate the efficient reconstruction and conversion of existing building models, particularly transforming Germany's official 3D Building Models in LoD2 into comprehensive, information-rich IFC models using open-source software. Through the integration of BaseX and CesiumJS, the visualization, querying and extracting of one LoD2 model from CityGML file become easy and feasible. Central to the LoD2BIM workflow is Blender, it acts as the primary platform for model editing, reconstruction and conversion. Users can expediently rebuild and refine LoD2 models utilizing Blender’s visual interface and the tool floorplan to blender3d, based on floorplans or detailed written descriptions. New Blender add-ons are developed to streamline the model import and conversion process. The BlenderBIM add-on is also modified to facilitate the automatic batch assignment of mesh as IFC classes. This workflow not only showcases the reconstruction and subsequent conversion of CityGML models into IFC models but also illustrates the potential to act as an alternative to commercial software in Building Information Modeling (BIM) editing

Dynamisch-adaptive Kostenkalkulation für die Bauprojektentwicklung in vernetzten Systemen

Die Entwicklung von Projekten des Hoch- und Industriebaus ist durch eine Vielzahl von zu verarbeitenden Informationen und Bewertungsgrundlagen in den Planungsphasen der Bau-land- sowie der Hoch- und Industriebauentwicklung für die Kostenkalkulation geprägt. Die Identifizierung, Beschaffung, Verwaltung und Verarbeitung dieser nach Art, Form und Inhalt bei den Kommunikationspartnern verteilt vorliegenden Informationen führt zu komplexen Planungsprozessen. Zur Bewältigung dieser Komplexität ist die Bauprojektentwicklung kooperativ in vernetzten Systemen durchzuführen. Insbesondere kann die Kostenkalkulation auf Basis der sich zeitlich verändernden Fachinformation im Netz effizient, zeitnah und mit hoher Qualität durchgeführt werden. Die bisher eingesetzten Methoden und Verfahren unterstützen die Projektplaner bei der Datenerfassung und -verarbeitung der kostenrelevanten Informationen nur in lokalen Computernetzen. Die Erfassung von Kosteninformationen, wie zum Beispiel Kostenschätzungen zur Planung von Projekten oder die im Laufe der Projektentwicklung entstehenden Kosten, liegen jedoch verteilt bei den Projektpartnern vor. Es ist daher notwendig, zur Vermeidung von Erfassungs-fehlern und zur Steigerung der Kooperation der Projektpartner bei der wirtschaftlichen Kalkulation von Bauprojekten, den Projektpartnern eine rechnergestützte und projektweite Kalkulation unter Nutzung von Computernetzwerken zu ermöglichen. Die Autoren stellen ein agenten-basiertes Kooperationsmodell für die Kosten-Kalkulation in Rahmen der Bauprojektentwicklung in vernetzten Systemen vor, das durch Strukturierung der Planungsinformationen die selbständige Suche nach klar definierten Informationen auf Basis mobiler Internet-Agenten dynamisch-adaptiv unterstützt

Enhancing Egress Drills: Preparation and Assessment of Evacuee Performance

This article explores how egress drills-specifically those related to fire incidents-are currently used, their impact on safety levels, and the insights gained from them. It is suggested that neither the merits of egress drills are well understood, nor the impact on egress performance well characterized. In addition, the manner in which they are conducted varies both between and within regulatory jurisdictions. By investigating their strengths and limitations, this article suggests opportunities for their enhancement possibly through the use of other egress models to support and expand upon the benefits provided. It is by no means suggested that drills are not important to evacuation safety-only that their inconsistent use and the interpretation of the results produced may mean we (as researchers, practitioners, regulators, and stakeholders) are not getting the maximum benefit out of this important tool

The potential of ontology-based Serious Gaming in the AEC domain

The term “Serious Gaming” or “Gaming with a purpose” describes the combination of game concepts and methods with other information technologies in “serious” fields of applications. In the context of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) domain Serious Games have the potential to achieve additional value beyond pure entertainment. During the game design process the thematic background (in the presented case the AEC background) of a Serious Game is of particular importance. This requires domain-specific knowledge, usually represented by domain-experts (civil engineers and architects) as part of the game development team. A challenging task of the design process is the creation of game objects to model the game world. In the presented case these game objects are based on common AEC objects (like wall, floor, window, door etc.) with some additional information about their role in the game scenario like interactive behavior or different states during the game timeline. To enhance the AEC objects information about the implicit meaning of each object is required. This includes a time-consuming reasoning and decision-making process based on the experts experience in the application domain. However, it is assumed that this currently limits the application of Serious Gaming in the AEC domain. To solve this problem the presented research approach tries to retrieve most of the required knowledge automatically form a knowledge base (KB). This KB consists of digital content, which is already created during the Building Information Modeling (BIM) process. The challenge here is to displace the interpretation of information from the expert into a computer system. This requires a formalization of knowledge that could be derived from existing data and captured by an ontology, including a set of concepts and relationships between those concepts within the application domain. The present chapter introduces an ontology-based approach to support Serious Game design by enabling automatic creation of game design documents and game content using BIM data as a KB. For creating the KB for the presented use case, single AEC objects were enriched with additional information (e.g. events for interaction, animations, artwork, textures) about their role in the game with semantic technologies. This approach has the potential, that Serious Gaming becomes a common engineering method for daily practice, because data that are already incurred in the BIM process can be integrated and reused with minor effort

Rule-Based Views and Linked Building Data for Efficient Planning Processes

Why are real construction projects still so seldomly assisted by building simulations? Within the research project SolConPro, a new and detailed investigation of the current digitalization processes in construction has been performed. Based on its results, new concepts for data management and for data preprocessing are suggested. By keeping data management independent of the applications, the same data amount can be addressed by several software programs at once. For information management, linked data structures are suggested, while for filtering and preprocessing, a new concept named Rule-Based views (RBV) is suggested. The paper shows the implementation of both innovations by connecting the innovative data management to the BIM software program Autodesk Revit