Software Systems Approach to Multi-Scale GIS-BIM Utility Infrastructure Network Integration and Resource Flow Simulation

Abstract

There is an increasing impetus for the use of digital city models and sensor network data to understand the current demand for utility resources and inform future infrastructure service planning across a range of spatial scales. Achieving this requires the ability to represent a city as a complex system of connected and interdependent components in which the topology of the electricity, water, gas, and heat demand-supply networks are modelled in an integrated manner. However, integrated modelling of these networks is hampered by the disparity between the predominant data formats and modelling processes used in the Geospatial Information Science (GIS) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) domains. This paper presents a software systems approach to scale-free, multi-format, integrated modelling of evolving cross-domain utility infrastructure network topologies, and the analysis of the spatiotemporal dynamics of their resource flows. The system uses a graph database to integrate the topology of utility network components represented in the CityGML UtilityNetwork Application Domain Extension (ADE), Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) real-time streaming messages. A message broker is used to disseminate the changing state of the integrated topology and the dynamic resource flows derived from the streaming data. The capability of the developed system is demonstrated via a case study in which internal building and local electricity distribution feeder networks are integrated, and a real-time building management sensor data stream is used to simulate and visualise the spatiotemporal dynamics of electricity flows using a dynamic web-based visualisation.