GIS gives IFC potential for:
- global location through map information provision
- local information about building planning
- utility information for the services in a building
- risk from nearby geographical features
IFC for GIS
There is a significant overlap between the AEC/FM world and the geographic information world. Buildings are constructed facilities that are placed in a geographic context and need to know about their relation with the world (terrain, land parcel, local zoning requirements, road access and more). Both share the concept of lifecycle based information and have similar approaches to portfolio and capital project development, design processes, costing and cost management, asset management, maintenance and other factors.
The IFC for GIS (IFG) project proposes solutions for the passage of information to from GIS to AEC/FM about terrains, land parcels, local planning, road access etc. and from AEC/FM to GIS about building configuration and use.
Satisfaction of the scope of the project provides sufficient information from stored GIS data to enable the various design requirements of a building to proceed.
- When the building has been designed, it can undergo regulatory checks. These can include conventional prescriptive and/or performance based building regulation checks (similar to those supported by the present IFC Code Checking View and implemented by the Singapore Building and Construction Authority).
- Additional regulatory checks can be undertaken at the interface between AEC/FM and GIS information and may include such aspects as zoning requirements, access and delivery provision, connection to utility services, fire safety provision, environment, pollution and sustainability provision, buildability, natural risk factors (flood, earthquake, subsidence etc.) and more.
- Satisfactory regulation checking enables the building to be completed. Once this has been achieved, completion data about the building can be provided back to the central property and building registry.
AEC enables GIS to:
- see a building as real objects and not just as illustrations pasted onto a map
- see the components within and around a building
- provides benefit through giving real building data for security and emergency services.
Objective
The primary objective of the IFG project is to enable the IFC model to be used to share information with geographic information systems. For this, new and enhanced capabilities will be provided in the IFC model (version 2x3 release candidate 1)
An objective of the project is to use the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) model as the specification for the exchange of limited but meaningful information between GIS and AEC/FM CAD systems and vice versa. The aim is to use entities that are already established within the Coordination and Code Checking views of IFC 2x so as to be able to reuse insofar as possible the tools, techniques and capabilities already developed by vendors at the AEC side of the demonstration. New and enhanced capabilities are provided in the IFC model (version 2x3 release candidate 1) to recognise:
- specifically geographic elements that are not within the domain of AEC/FM activities
- coordinate system mapping
- qualified geometry (including contour lines, sight lines, survey points etc.)
- element proximity
It is expressly not an objective of the IFG project to create an information model that can completely represent geographic information. The GML (Geographic Markup Language) model is recognised as the standard for this purpose and the provision of capability within the IFC model through the project is intended to be sufficient to enable relevant information to be transformed between the IFC and GML formats.
Scope
The scope of the IFG project is to
- provide geographic information through IFC by leveraging developments that have occurred within IAI (for the AEC community) and ISO TC211/OGC (for the geographic information community).
- define the interface between the AEC/FM world and the geographic information world and to develop strategies to improve interoperability and collaboration.
- define model development and/or mapping approaches that build upon geographic information developments within ISO TC211/OGC.
The IFG project focusses on support for making the zoning plan and building plan submission process more efficient. Key to this is the integration of geographic information in a central building and property registry with AEC/FM information about the individual buildings that are registered. By doing this, the following scenario can be supported.
IFG Project Details
The IFG project is supported by Statens Bygningstekniske Etat in Norway. Project management is undertaken by Boligprodusentene and technical management by AEC3 Ltd.
Information about the project is freely available including model specifications, standards comparisons, use cases, test examples and more.
We have active project participants in many countries including Norway, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, United States, Australia, Hungary, Singapore and Japan.
Collaboration with representative of the OGC CAD-GIS Working Group has been established to further promote information transfer across the AEC/FM <-> GIS interface.
For further information contact either:
Jons Sjogren (project manager) or Jeffrey Wix (technical manager)
