BIMyVerse: Towards a Semantic Interpretation of Buildings in the City and Cities in the Universe.

Metaverse was recently introduced as an online virtual world or world of worlds that incorporates the augmented/virtual/mixed/extended reality (AR/VR/MR/XR), Internet of Things (IoT), personalization with virtual avatars, interaction and communication interlinking real and/or virtual “things” with “things”. Metaverse users are supposed to live in a digital realm in which such living universes are created either as imaginative or realistic environments. This brings a new creative space for architects in the Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) sector to design new buildings and cities in a semi-realistic digital world as they can be inspired by actual urban settings and augment these real or realistic environments towards a cyber environment. This paper aims to present such a cyber environment, called BIMyVerse, that blends IoT-enabled situational awareness, VR-supported integrated semantic digital twin models incorporating Building Information Model (BIM), Geographical Information System (GIS) and sensory cyberspace and explainable interpretations for better interaction with buildings and urban contexts. The proof of concept studies demonstrate how BIMyVerse can be used for i) situational fire regulation check and monitoring the maintenance status (building-scale); ii) circular economy provisioning through the digital twin of an urban transformation area (urban-scale).