Integrating BIM with Urban Spatial Applications

Abstract

BIM as a developing concept is adding sophisticated data structures to 3D building models. From recent experience, it can be seen that BIM is enabling the sharing and management of building information. However, BIM is a building scale concept; to fully consider and assess the building information, BIM should be put in the larger geospatial information context, because buildings cannot be isolated from the context of their surrounding neighbourhood and city environment. A review of (3D-) GIS tells us that GIS adds an attribute database to geospatial data, and therefore greatly enables geographical analysis. Geo-spatial related decision-making now-a-days can hardly be done without the help of GIS systems. This chapter reviews recent research into integration of geo-spatial information and building information and in particular, it reviews the VEPS project, its scenarios and approaches, achievements and future development. This review shows the benefit of integrating BIM with the urban scale contextual data. More than that, this chapter also discusses the range of stakeholders such as building contractors, estate agents, city management, and public sector that will benefit from the integration of BIM and (3D-) GIS. Finally, there is a discussion of the way forward in the integration of BIM and urban models.