Towards integrating BIM and GIS—an end-to-end example from point cloud to analysis

Abstract

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is becoming increasingly important within the UK, not least because of a UK Government directive that mandates Level 2 BIM for companies tendering for Government work, with the aim of reducing the cost of construction of public assets by 20–30 %. While this is aimed at new construction, it can be foreseen that a wider introduction of BIM could also result in savings during large refurbishment projects, which form a significant part of construction work in the UK, as well as during the occupancy phase of the building. However, unlike new projects, where the model for the BIM can be obtained from CAD drawings, deriving a detailed BIM for pre-existing structures requires some form of scan-to-BIM operation using laser scanning. To contribute to sustainability in construction, an underlying driver for BIM, the BIM must also be integrated with other data sources. Therefore, once the scan is complete, the resulting point cloud must be converted into geometry objects and geo-referenced for integration with Geographical data such as air quality or noise information. This paper presents an end-to-end example of this process, focusing in particular on the challenges of integrating BIM and GIS into one framework, and highlighting preliminary steps to be carried out during BIM creation in order to enable this to take place.