Construction-specific spatial information reasoning in Building Information Models

In recent years, there have been significant advances in modeling technology for object-oriented building products. However, the building models are still lacking of providing construction-specific spatial information required for construction planning. Consequently, construction planners visually analyze building product models and derive geometric characteristics such as bounded spaces and exterior perimeter to develop detailed construction plans. Such a process presents fragmented information flows, from building product information to construction planning, that rely on subjective decisions of construction planners. In order to overcome these drawbacks, this research proposes a geometric reasoning system that analyzes geometric information in building designs, derives the construction-specific spatial information, and uses the information to assist in construction planning. The scope of presented work includes detecting work packages formed by faces during construction, such as large work faces and bounded spaces, and using information in the work packages directly to support planning of selected indoor construction activities. The main features of the proposed system named Construction Spatial Information Reasoner (CSIR) include a set of relationship acquisition algorithms, building component relationship data structure, and interpretation of the relationship to support detailed construction activity planning. The relationship acquisition algorithms identify adjacency between building components that is stored in the relational data structure. Then, acquired adjacency relationships are transformed into a set of graphs that represent work packages. To implement the proposed approach, CSIR utilized a commercially-available Building Information Modeling (BIM) platform and the algorithms were imbedded to the BIM platform. For validation, CSIR was tested on a real commercial building. For interior ceiling grid installation activities, CSIR successfully detected existing work packages and analyzed the spatial characteristics impacting construction productivity. The major contribution of the presented research would be to enable a realistic analysis of building geometric condition that is not possible in current BIM and a seamless information flow from building product information to construction process plans. These can potentially reduce current manual and error-prone construction planning processes. Limitations and future research suggestions are also presented.     

Processing of Topological BIM Queries using Boundary Representation Based Methods

Building Information Models (BIM) are comprehensive digital representations of buildings, which provide a large set of information originating from the different disciplines involved in the design, construction and operation processes. Moreover, accessing the data needed for a specific downstream application scenario is a challenging task in large-scale BIM projects. Several researchers recently proposed using formal query languages for specifying the desired information in a concise, well-defined manner. One of the main limitations of the languages introduced so far, however, is the inadequate treatment of geometric information. This is a significant drawback, as buildings are inherently spatial objects and qualitative spatial relationships accordingly play an important role in the analysis and verification of building models. In addition, the filters needed in specific data exchange scenarios for selecting the information required can be built by spatial objects and their relations. The lack of spatial functionality in BIM query languages is filled by the Query Language for Building Information Models (QL4BIM) which provides metric, directional and topological operators for defining filter expressions with qualitative spatial semantics. This paper focuses on the topological operators provided by the language. In particular, it presents a new implementation method based on the boundary representation of the operands which outperforms the previously presented octree-based approaches. The paper discusses the developed algorithms in detail and presents extensive performance tests.     

装配式建筑自上而下设计信息协同与模型构建

为顺应国家建筑产业化、智能化发展的政策引导,针对当前装配式建筑专业信息缺乏关联、模 型利用不充分、数据传递效率低下等问题,提出基于建筑信息模型(BIM)技术的自上而下设计方法。以装配式 建筑的设计阶段为切入点,详细阐述了基于 BIM 技术的装配式建筑自上而下设计流程。结合装配式建筑的标 准化构件设计和组装特点,提出一种基于自上而下设计的装配模型,并从层级和专业 2 个角度描述了模型的架 构。针对各专业模型传递时的数据信息标准化、一致性问题,通过工业基础类(IFC)标准对装配模型进行实体和 属性集的扩展,提出基于 IFC 标准的各专业、各阶段的自上而下设计信息协同。经实例验证了 IFC 扩展装配模 型的自上而下设计可行性,为装配式建筑的协同设计提供了有益的方法借鉴。     

Feature modeling for configurable and adaptable modular buildings

Current design approaches for new buildings do not sufficiently plan for or adapt to changing conditions that could be used to extend the useful life of buildings, as part of a circular economy. While notable advances have emerged for using BIM-based configurators to improve building design and project execution, there is a need expand such configurators to look at how buildings can be adapted and re-configured across their lifecycle. This paper develops and demonstrates an innovative feature modeling approach for configuring and adapting modular buildings. This study uses BIM for structuring intricate feature relationships of specific design aspects in terms of product circularity. The design aspects considered are structural design, dimensional variation control, and disassembly planning design. Feature parameter maps, which are a general constraint relation representation, are implemented to describe the data models since they are an efficient way to visualize feature elements and interdependencies, to avoid the creation of redundant information, and to improve data structure consistency. The application of the proposed methodology is validated with a functional demonstration of a conceptual design and optimization for a single module that is meant to be part of a modular construction project. The product model was synthesized in a parametric BIM environment for iterative configuration, analysis of results, and final optimization of the single module assembly. The demonstration case study shows that BIM can be adapted to assist on modeling specific design aspects for modular buildings and to create design alternatives. Also, the method shows a considerable benefit that the designer can produce diverse accurate design alternatives within a reduced amount of time.     

基于 BIM 和本体的建筑不规则类型审查

建筑不规则类型审查是建筑抗震审查的重要组成部分,对建筑抗震安全有重要意义。为提高审查 效率和准确性,提出一套基于建筑信息模型(BIM)和本体的建筑不规则类型审查方法。首先解析梳理建筑不规则 类型审查规范条文,然后将规范条文转译成计算机可识别的语义审查规则,并根据审查逻辑构建建筑不规则类型 审查本体;其次从待审查建筑的 BIM 文件中抽取审查信息,如楼层开洞面积,基于模板匹配算法从结构计算书 自动抽取审查所需计算结果参数,如扭转位移比;接着基于建筑不规则类型审查本体组织审查信息,利用审查规 则推理获得审查结果,进而生成审查报告。最后以某建筑为例验证了该方法的可行性和较强地扩展能力,为进一 步实现建筑抗震审查的自动化奠定了技术基础。     

Information modeling of earthquake-damaged reinforced concrete structures

Accurate and reliable information about buildings can greatly improve post-earthquake responses, such as search and rescue, repair and recovery. Building Information Modeling (BIM), rapid scanning and other assessment technologies offer the opportunity not only to retrieve as-built information but also to compile as-damaged models. This research proposes an information model to facilitate the data flow for post-earthquake assessment of reinforced concrete structures. The schema development was based on typical damage modes and the existing Industry Foundation Class (IFC) schema. Two examples of damaged structures from recent earthquake events, compiled using an experimental damage modeling software, illustrate the use of the data model. The model introduces two new classes, one to represent segments of building elements and the other to model the relationships between segments and cracks. A unique feature is the ability to model the process of damage with a binary tree structure. Methods for exporting as-damaged instance models using IFC are also discussed.     

Automated segmentation of RGB-D images into a comprehensive set of building components using deep learning

Building information modeling (BIM) has a semantic scope that encompasses all building systems, e.g. architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. Automated, comprehensive digital modeling of buildings will require methods for semantic segmentation of images and 3D reconstructions capable of recognizing all building component classes. However, prior building component recognition methods have had limited semantic coverage and are not easily combined or scaled. Here we show that a deep neural network can semantically segment RGB-D (i.e. color and depth) images into 13 building component classes simultaneously despite the use of a small training dataset with only 1490 object instances. For this task, the method achieves an average intersection over union (IoU) of 0.5. The dataset was designed using a common building taxonomy to ensure comprehensive semantic coverage and was collected from a diversity of buildings to ensure intra-class diversity. As a consequence of its semantic scope, it was necessary to perform pre-segmentation and 3D to 2D projection as leverage for dataset annotation. In creating our deep learning pipeline, we found that transfer learning, class balancing, and prevention of overfitting effectively overcame the dataset’s borderline adequate class representation. Our results demonstrate how the semantic coverage of a building component recognition method can be scaled to include a larger diversity of building systems. We anticipate our method to be a starting point for broadening the scope of the semantic segmentation methods involved in digital modeling of buildings.     

A BIM-Oriented Model for supporting indoor navigation requirements

Existing indoor navigation approaches such as navigation based on 2D geometries and pre-defined routing remain insufficient for many applications such as emergency response, delivery, utility maintenance and facility management. The insufficiencies caused by existing navigation approaches can be overcome by making use of the advanced semantic and geometric information included in intelligent building models. A key example of such models is Building Information Models (BIMs) which contain detailed geometric and semantic information about buildings. In fact, the BIMs’ structure is very complex for facilitating navigation. This paper presents a new BIM Oriented Modeling methodology resulting in the definition of a new BIM based model (BO-IDM) dedicated for facilitating indoor navigation. The paper later describes the transformation of information from a standard BIM (IFC) into the new model (BO-IDM). The innovation aspects of BO-IDM can be summarized as follows: (i) it provides highly detailed semantic information for indoor navigation and (ii) it represents the non-geo-referenced structure and complex geometries of BIMs with ISO 19107 compliant representations. Therefore this model is well suited for indoor navigation.     

Detecting damaged building parts in earthquake-damaged areas using differential seeded region growing

Acquiring information about earthquake-damaged buildings is essential for effective rescue and restoration operations. Building damage must be assessed to provide detailed information regarding the location and proportion of damage to individual buildings. Automatic processing of damage assessment is also critical in hastening relief efforts. Therefore, we propose a new method for automatically extracting damaged building parts and quantitatively assessing the damage to individual buildings caused by earthquakes. The proposed method consists of four parts: generating differential information, differential seeded region growing (DSRG), rule-based earthquake damage analysis, and accuracy assessment. First, differential information is automatically derived to extract the damage candidates. The damage candidates are then used as seed points for the region growing process to extract damaged building parts without requiring intervention by a human analyst. Then, designed automated extraction rules based on the condition of the collapsed or crushed buildings are used on the DSRG results. We applied the proposed method to both a residential area and a business area in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and evaluated its accuracy using a visual comparison, a location-based assessment, and a proportion-based assessment. The results of the visual comparison were similar to the reference data, exhibiting location accuracies of 86% and 89% for the chosen residential and business areas, respectively. An assessment of the damage proportion to individual buildings was performed, which showed that the proposed method achieved accuracies of 81% and 84% for the residential and business areas, respectively, and was highly correlated with the reference data. The proposed method can accurately estimate damaged building parts, which can accelerate rapid relief actions in earthquake-damaged areas. In addition, the proposed method promotes cost-effective relief actions because it filters out many intact buildings without omitting damaged buildings.     

基于BIM技术的建筑建模与成本控制

本论文根据潍坊市寒亭区农村住宅F9C住宅楼,建筑面积195.5 m2,使用面积169.7 m2,根据住宅图纸建立模型、通过建筑建模解决问题、运用BIM建模发现的问题。建立模型当中屋顶的绘制和玻璃斜板的绘制是难点,出于图纸设计和整体美观的考虑,改变部分墙体、楼板和玻璃斜板的坡度,使屋顶更加美观,优化了玻璃斜板的施工方法。由于BIM建模处于施工阶段的前一项工作,能够全面地体现整体建筑,做好数据信息和几何信息的控制,同时可以监控施工中工程信息的变化的同时更改信息实时记录,弥补了传统成本控制中事前控制和事中控制的缺失,不仅对图纸设计进行改良避免了施工过程的损失,还对工期和质量的控制保障有所提高。对于BIM这个新兴产品,在国内没有被广泛的接受,原因不单单包括大部分人对BIM的陌生和只有少数人拥有BIM技术,还包括计算机技术的提升和投资方不愿意对该业务资金的投入,BIM在国内发展缓慢。经过时间累计,BIM对工程成本控制的优点会被越来越多的人看到,也将会带动建筑业的发展。     

Formalized knowledge of construction sequencing for visual monitoring of work-in-progress via incomplete point clouds and low-LoD 4D BIMs

Over the last few years, new methods that detect construction progress deviations by comparing laser scanning or image-based point clouds with 4D BIM are developed. To create complete as-built models, these methods require the visual sensors to have proper line-of-sight and field-of-view to building elements. For reporting progress deviations, they also require Building Information Modeling (BIM) and schedule Work-Breakdown-Structure (WBS) with high Level of Development (LoD). While certain logics behind sequences of construction activities can augment 4D BIM with lower LoDs to support making inferences about states of progress under limited visibility, their application in visual monitoring systems has not been explored. To address these limitations, this paper formalizes an ontology that models construction sequencing rationale such as physical relationships among components. It also presents a classification mechanism that integrates this ontology with BIM to infer states of progress for partially and fully occluded components. The ontology and classification mechanism are validated using a Charrette test and by presenting their application together with BIM and as-built data on real-world projects. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and generality of the proposed ontology. It also illustrates how the classification mechanism augments 4D BIM at lower LoDs and WBS to enable visual progress assessment for partially and fully occluded BIM elements and provide detailed operational-level progress information.     

基于多纹理特征融合的震后SAR图像倒塌建筑物信息提取

合成孔径雷达（SAR）凭借其全天候观测能力以及SAR图像中丰富的纹理信息,在震后建筑物倒塌评估中发挥了重要作用。针对SAR图像中倒塌建筑物纹理特征多样但利用率较低,且特征信息冗余的问题,提出一种基于主成分分析的SAR图像多纹理特征分类方法。该方法基于灰度直方图、灰度共生矩阵、局部二值模式、Gabor滤波器提取了26种纹理特征信息,构建主成分变量进行多维特征优选与降维融合,通过随机森林分类算法提取建筑物的倒塌信息。以2016年日本熊本地震为例验证了该方法的有效性,结果显示其提取精度高达79.85%,倒塌建筑物的识别效率有所提高,分类结果优于单种纹理特征提取方法及多种纹理特征组合提取法,可用于震后建筑物震害信息的快速提取。     

基于IFC 的传感器信息存储与应用研究

在建筑的施工和运维管理过程中,存在大量的传感器采集的数据,但是这些数据 存于各自的监测系统中,产生“信息孤岛”局面,难以对其进一步的融合分析,使其产生更大的 价值。建筑信息模型(BIM)技术支持将传感器数据与工程数据集成管理和应用,但是面向BIM 存储的工业基础类国际标准(IFC)对传感器数据的定义和描述仍有缺陷。为此,提出了基于IFC 的传感器信息存储方法与应用流程,分析了IFC 中与传感器有关的信息描述和关联机制,进而 通过自定义属性集的方式扩展了IFC标准,最后以北京槐房再生水厂项目为应用案例验证了IFC 扩展内容的有效性。     

A Summary of Research Methods for Seismic Damage Information Recognition of Polarized SAR Buildings

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can observe the Earth without the influence of the weather and sunlight, and Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) even could acquire four kinds of polarization information at the same time. Therefore, extracting post-earthquake damage information by use of PolSAR has the advantage of timeliness and accuracy. This paper shows a summary of the methods for extracting seismic damage information based on PolSAR data. It firstly review the development of PolSAR and then summarizes the application and comparative analysis of the data types (multi-source data, multi-temporal data and single-temporal data) for extracting seismic damage of buildings in the past 10 years. Next, the methods of building earthquake damage extraction based on polarization decomposition and polarization characteristics and texture features is summarized. Finally, the research work is proposed to supplement the deficiency of PolSAR in earthquake damage extraction accuracy with the combination of geographic information data POI.     

极化SAR建筑物震害信息识别研究方法综述

合成孔径雷达具有全天候、全天时的对地观测优势,全极化合成孔径雷达（PolSAR）能够同时获取4种极化信息,利用PolSAR在震后进行震害评估具有及时性和准确性的优势。首先概述了PolSAR的发展状况及其在建筑物震害信息提取中的应用;其次,基于不同数据类型（多时相数据、多源数据、单时相数据）,概述了近10 a来 PolSAR数据在建筑物震害提取中的应用及其对比分析;然后,从极化分解方法、极化特征以及纹理特征3个方面对PolSAR数据的建筑物震害提取方法进行了详细阐述;最后,提出未来研究工作的设想,以期结合地理信息数据POI补充PolSAR在震害评估精度方面的不足。     

State of the art in damage information modeling for RC bridges – A literature review

In Germany, bridges have an average age of 40 years. A bridge consumes between 0.4% and 2% of its construction cost per year over its entire life cycle. This means that up to 80% of the construction cost are additionally needed for operation, inspection, maintenance, and destruction. Current practices rely either on paper-based inspections or on abstract specialist software. Every application in the inspection and maintenance sector uses its own data model for structures, inspections, defects, and maintenance. Due to this, data and properties have to be transferred manually, otherwise a converter is necessary for every data exchange between two applications. To overcome this issue, an adequate model standard for inspections, damage, and maintenance is necessary. Modern 3D models may serve as a single source of truth, which has been suggested in the Building Information Modeling (BIM) concept. Further, these models offer a clear visualization of the built infrastructure, and improve not only the planning and construction phases, but also the operation phase of construction projects. BIM is established mostly in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector to plan and construct new buildings. Currently, BIM does not cover the whole life cycle of a building, especially not inspection and maintenance. Creating damage models needs the building model first, because a defect is dependent on the building component, its properties and material. Hence, a building information model is necessary to obtain meaningful conclusions from damage information. This paper analyzes the requirements, which arise from practice, and the research that has been done in modeling damage and related information for bridges. With a look at damage categories and use cases related to inspection and maintenance, scientific literature is discussed and synthesized. Finally, research gaps and needs are identified and discussed.     

Incorporation of BIM-based probabilistic non-structural damage assessment into agent-based post-earthquake evacuation simulation

Earthquakes can cause severe damage to structural and non-structural elements of buildings; consequently, they pose high risks to human lives. To mitigate such risks, attention has been paid to enhancing the indoor environment for increased building safety. Yet little effort has been made to assess a building occupants' evacuation behaviors in response to damage to the indoor environment. This paper addresses this issue with a novel simulation framework that couples human behaviors with changes to the indoor building environment during post-earthquake evacuation. In particular, we present a building information modelling (BIM)-based prototype that simulates seismic damage to the non-structural indoor elements and visualizes its impacts on evacuation using a color-coded heat map. The simulated damage is then used as input to an agent-based model for post-earthquake evacuation. Using a probabilistic method to assess the non-structural elements' damage states, we are able to evaluate the impact of indoor damage on the evacuation process. We performed a trial of our prototype for a hypothetical earthquake in an educational building. The results revealed how the average evacuation time would increase as the earthquake intensity increases (from 38.6 s for the no-damage scenario to 122.9 for the highest-damage scenario). The proposed prototype has the potential to be joined with other tools, such as finite-element-based simulation, to incorporate structural analysis as well. Planners and designers can explicitly use our model's output to analyze the post-earthquake evacuation with the indoor non-structural damage to assess different building design geometries that increase the chances of a suitable evacuation process.     

Graph-based retrieval of building information models for supporting the early design stages

Building information modeling (BIM) principles are transforming today’s communication and working processes in the field of construction, however the early design phases are only rarely supported and information technology is therefore not exploited to its full potential. The early design phases are characterized by an iterative process of searching for plausible solutions. A common approach is to refer to similar examples, which are conventionally found using keyword-based search strategies.To this end we propose a method for indexing spatial configurations along with a sketch-based input method for search strategies that uses so-called semantic fingerprints of buildings. The topology of spatial configurations is extracted from building information models and represented as graphs. For both building information models and the user sketches, the extracted graphs are used as the basis for a subgraph-matching algorithm facilitating an intuitive novel query method for researching similar reference examples. The system is able to present corresponding existing solutions to even rudimentary sketches or fragments of a design idea. In addition to graph matching and sketch-based interaction, more recent BIM-based approaches are also taken into account.     

BIM技术在古建筑保护中的应用研究

传统测绘方法获取的二维图纸难以满足现有古建筑修缮和保护的要求,本文采用三维激光扫描技术与BIM结合,通过对点云数据的处理可以高效的建立高精度的古建筑三维立体模型,使古建筑三维模型结构化及数据信息化,便于古建筑的数字化存档,为古建筑的修缮和保护提供数据支持。