Strategy for Defining an Interoperability Layer for Linear Infrastructure

Abstract

The structure of the IFC model originally focused on buildings – vertical construction. The containment hierarchy of project, site(s) – building(s) – building storeys, reflects this. There are a number of activities within buildingSMART working on infrastructure extensions – horizontal construction - to the IFC model, including roads, bridges, tunnels, ports and waterways. Each of these activities is defining the necessary extensions to the IFC model to support their particular domain of application. The IFC model has a four layer architecture, with the resource layer defining base concepts that are necessary for the higher levels, the core layer defines central concepts around product, process and control, the interoperability layer contains concepts that shared across a number of domains and is the main mechanism to support interoperability and finally the domain layer containing the concepts that are needed in a particular domain of application. Each of the existing buildingSMART activities in the infrastructure area are defining their own domain models. However, there is a need to define concepts in the interoperability layer to support information exchange between the various domains. This paper describes the initial considerations around the development of this interoperability layer for infrastructure. The paper is informed by the current work within buildingSMART in defining the various domain models, as well as current project work by the authors on modelling roads and stormwater/flooding.