ITcon Vol. 24, pg. 424-439, http://www.itcon.org/2019/22

Integrating BIM and product manufacturer data using the semantic web technologies

submitted:July 2018
revised:August 2019
published:October 2019
editor(s):Kumar B.
authors:Mehrdad Niknam, PhD
Editor-in-Chief and Director of Research, FarsiBIM
niknam@farsibim.com

Farzad Jalaei, PhD
Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University
f_jalae@encs.concordia.ca

Saeed Karshenas, PhD, PE
Professor, Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Saeed.karshenas@marquette.edu
summary:Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies enable the AEC-FM industry to create a shared virtual model of a project. BIM not only includes 3D geometry information but also information assigned as parameters to BIM elements. However, the information stored in BIM model elements is not comprehensive. For example, a chiller manufacturer provides a large volume of product data in pdf file format that is not included in the BIM model. It is possible to attach PDF files to BIM elements; the problem with an attached PDF is that its content cannot be interpreted by a computer. Automated retrieval and integration of distributed sources of data requires data in a machine-processable format. One way to solve this problem is to manually add additional data as element properties to a BIM model. However, manually inputting data to BIM platforms (e.g. Autodesk Revit) is a very time consuming and error-prone task. In this article, the authors present the Semantic Web technology as a new solution to integrating building product manufacturers’ data with BIM information. The authors convert both BIM data and building product data to RDF/OWL format. Data stored in RDF/OWL format can be easily processed by machines and integrated with RDF/OWL formatted data from other sources over the Internet. The authors use Semantic Web Services to handle data communication between a BIM knowledge base and the product manufacturers’ knowledge bases. The authors compare manual entry of manufacturer data to a BIM model to the semantics-based data integration presented in the paper. Results show that the authors’ approach improves productivity.
keywords:Building Information Modeling, BIM, Facility management, Semantic Web, RDF, OWL, Ontology
full text: (PDF file, 1.234 MB)
citation:Niknam M, Jalaei F, Karshenas S (2019). Integrating BIM and product manufacturer data using the semantic web technologies, ITcon Vol. 24, pg. 424-439, https://www.itcon.org/2019/22