BIM+geospatial integration is being driven by a trend toward infrastructure construction projects that require maintenance and/or operations during an extended period post-construction. At the GEO|Design+BIM conference in Amsterdam, Sanghee Shin, CEO of Gaia3D Inc., gave a riveting presentation about a web-based geo-platform integrating massive, complex BIM models using open source geospatial libraries and tools including PostGIS, GeoServer, and Cesium and NASA WorldWind virtual globes.
Drivers of BIM+geospatial integration
Since the world became aware of the importance of human impact on the environment, it has become increasingly difficult to design buildings without reference to geographic context. Many cities have environmental zoning and other types of by-laws that require designers to take into account neighboring buildings, infrastructure and vegetation. States and national governments are developing building codes that require designers to assess the energy, water, emissions, and other environmental impacts of buildings. This means that when designing and constructing a building or renovating existing buildings, the traditional approach ( often associated with a 0,0 coordinate system ) of design in isolation is no longer adequate for sustainable design.
Furthermore integrated geospatial+BIM is essential during the operations and maintenance phase of a building. Utilities, transportation, emergency planning, first-responder access, energy performance, and evacuation management all require information about internal and external infrastructure. A common geospatial coordinate system enables a comprehensive operational view of all infrastructure including internal and external structures.
BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance. A leader in this space, Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch transportation authority, began offering design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) projects a number of years ago which has motivated private Dutch engineering and construction companies to adopt an integrated geospatial+BIM approach to construction. For example, the firm Royal BAM Group nv/BAM Infraconsult adopted integrated BIM+geospatial because of market developments including more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project.
It is indicative of the importance of the integration of these technologies that Autodesk and ESRI, 800 lb gorillas in their respective areas of BIM and GIS, have announced an agreement to collaborate to help bridge the gap between BIM and 3D GIS. This is their seond attempt. The first attempt, an agreement between Jack Dangermond and Carol Bartz in the mid 90s, resulted in a product called ArcCAD, intended for civil engineers and planners.
An open source geo-platform for integrating BIM+geospatial
mago3D is a new 3D geo-platform developed by Gaia3D. It is open source and integrates many well-known open source geospatial products and APis. It is web-based so it is not necessary to install anything to run it. It has an engine for handling massive, complex BIM objects based on an internal format (F4D) that was created to reduce network data traffic, enable LOD (level of detail) control, support octrees, a 3D spatial structure that enables efficient spatial queries and (frustrum and occultation) culling. Culling refers to the removal of objects that are not visible to the observer and is key to efficient visualization or large, complex structures. It integrates with two of the best known open source 3D virtual globe tools, Cesium (supported by AGI and Bentley) and NASA WorldWind, for visualization in a geospatial context. Viewing BIM structures in mago3D has some similarities with a Google Earth experience. The source code is available under Apache and AGPL (Affero GPL) open source licenses. Cesium is an open source project supported by AGI and Bentley.
mago3D includes a F4D Converter that converts BIM models in IFC (buildingSmart Industry Foundation Classes) format as well as 3D objects in .3ds (Autodesk 3ds Max), .obj (Alias/Wavefront) and .dae (Collada) formats into its internal F4D format. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is a vendor neutral and open model that most industry software BIM tools including Revit and Tekla are able to export, although there is typically some information loss. The bimserver.org open source project provides an open repository of IFC models and offers a Java API to extract partial building information models from a repository.
The main components of mago3D are mago3D.js, a javascript plug-in for WebGL virtual globes and open source web server (NGiNX), map server (GeoServer), geospatially-enabled database (PostgreSQL+PostGIS), 2D mapping (OpenLayers, Leaflet) and 3D visualization (Cesium or NASA WorldWind). The mago3d.js javascript plugin is designed to run in a WebGL virtual globe environment in a browser so that moving/rotating objects such as BIM models and heading adjustment happen in-browser and are very fast.
I went to the mago3D site and viewed a BIM model of a chemical manufacturing facility in South Korea. I was impressed with the ability to zoom ala Google Earth from the entire virtual globe down to viewing the chemical facility in its geospatial context. I could continue down to a very detailed, almost nuts and bolts, level showing that the LoD control and the octree-based culling algorithms make visualization very efficient, even for large complex objects.
The importance of this technology is that it shows that it is possible using the available open source, geospatial APis and tools - together with some genuine innovative development - to create an open, non-proprietary 3D geospatial platform for integrating geospatial and BIM. Given the critical importance of addressing the cultural and technical divide between the AEC and geospatial worlds, a viable open source alternative is essential for developing the innovative solutions to the challenge of interfacing the two worlds.
The other part of the solution is common, open standards. There has been encouraging progress on that front. The major breakthrough in bringing the architectural and geospatial views onto a common footing is the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model developed by the OGC in cooperation with buildingSMART International and approved as an OGC standard in August, 2016. LandInfra was developed by Bentley Systems, Leica Geosystems, Trimble, Australian Government Department of Communications, Autodesk, Vianova Systems AS, and buildingSMART International and provides a unifying basis for land and civil engineering standards including the OGC's InfraGML and buildingSmart International's IFC for infrastructure standards.
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Great article but talk about 'bleeding edfe'... Translate mago3D from Korean handily using Google Translate app, but have you read the developer notes for F4Dconverter? I have been rash in trying new things in the past, but even for me, hairs stood on my nape when I read this...
Posted by: Azolnai | December 05, 2017 at 12:32 AM