Loss of information during design & construction for highways asset management: a geobim perspective

Abstract. Modern cities will have a catalytic role in regulating global economic growth and development, highlighting their role as centers of economic activity. With urbanisation being a consequence of that, the built environment is pressured to withstand the rapid increase in demand of buildings as well as safe, resilient and sustainable transportation infrastructure. Transportation Infrastructure has a unique characteristic: it is interconnected and thus, it is essential for the stakeholders to be able to capture, analyse and visualise these interlinked relationships efficiently and effectively. This requirement is addressed by an Asset Information Management System (AIMS) which enables the capture of such information from the early stages of a transport infrastructure construction project. Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information Science/Systems (GIS) are two domains which facilitate the authoring, management and exchange of asset information by providing the location underpinning, both in the short term and through the very long lifespan of the infrastructure. These systems are not interoperable by nature, with extensive Extract/Transform/Load procedures required when developing an integrated location-based Asset Management system, with consequent loss of information. The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight regarding the information lifecycle during Design and Construction on a Highways Project, focusing on identifying the stages in which loss of information can impact decision-making during operational Asset Management: (i) 3D Model to IFC, (ii) IFC to AIM and (iii) IFC to 3DGIS for AIM. The discussion highlights the significance of custom property sets and classification systems to bridge the different data structures as well as the power of 3D in visualizing Asset Information, with future work focusing on the potential of early BIM-GIS integration for operational AM.