Representation of As-built BIMs

Building Information Models (BIMs) are used in the architecture, engineering, construction, and facility management (AEC/FM) domains for a variety of purposes ranging from monitoring the construction or renovation of a facility to managing the facility during day-to-day operations. The representations of BIMs were originally designed to handle the precise and perfect data from a design model. However, actual buildings are never perfect and often deviate significantly from the design.

The goal of this research is to develop methods for representing the “as-built” or “as-is” conditions of a building. We are working to understand the differences in representational requirements for as-built BIMs as compared to as-designed BIMs. We are studying several aspects of the representation problem, including methods to represent occluded regions, data uncertainty, levels of detail, and metadata.

This project is funded in part, by the National Science Foundation (CMMI-0856558) and by the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance.