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Needs and Case for Action

Current State

Buildings and infrastructures management and control becomes increasingly important. Public Authorities regulate a larger number of aspects. This includes City Urbanism and Environmental Impact (Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Waste, Reuse and Repurpose, City Mining / Building as a Material Bank (BAMB)). Occupation and availability or suitability of Building or Infratucture for their use are also important and require increasingly detailed descriptive technical data. This includes the determination of taxes based on surface or the valuation of property.

The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) ISO 19152-1:2024 brings an interesting perpective on the relationship between Parties, Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities (RRR), Administrative Units (BAUnit) and Spatial Units (such as buidlings or infrastructure and parts thereof).

flowchart LR
    Party
    RRR
    BAUnit
    SpatialUnit
    Party --> RRR 
    RRR --> BAUnit
    BAUnit --> SpatialUnit

Many aspects of Public Regulations related to buildings and infrastructure appears as expressions of Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities (RRR) towards a (Basic) Administration Unit (BAUnit) related to a Spatial Unit.

The Cadaster is the primary domain of LADM, but Valuation of property is also included in the scope of LADM and -- in a broader perspective -- the concepts of RRR, BAUnit and Spatial Units are relevant for many administrative regulations.

For a given building, there may be numerous BAUnits (and related RRR), each covering a specific aspect:

  • Urban Permit BAUnit and related Spatial Unit
  • Energy Performance Certificate BAUnit and related Spatial Unit
  • Life Cycle Analysis BAUnit and related Spatial Unit
  • Housing Contract Registration BAUnit and related Spatial Unit
  • Tax on Commercial Surface BAUnit and related Spatial Unit
  • Tax on Office Surface BAUnit and related Spatial Unit
  • Regulated Parking BAUnit and related Spatial Unit
  • ...

The issue is that while there is a convergence in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) industry towards the adoption of standard data exchange formats (notably BIM / IFC), there is, in the Public Sector, a lack of adoption of standards to support administrative processes related to Spatial Units. Standards such as BIM/IFC are mostly regarded as too complex and beyond reach.

Typically, for each aspect -- i.e., each type of (Basic) Administrative Unit, there will be specfic formats, models and documents requested from the involved Parties to provide Spatial Unit related data.

flowchart LR
    Party
    RRR
    BAUnit
    SpatialUnit
    Party --> RRR 
    RRR --> BAUnit
    BAUnit --> SpatialUnit
    Data["BAUnit specific Data & Documents related to the corresponding Spatial Unit"] --> BAUnit

This means concretely that there will be specific data collection, data processing, data exchanges, documents format and Case Management processes for each type of BAUnit

  • Urban Permit BAUnit : specific forms, plans, documents, proof of rights, ...
  • Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) BAUnit : specific forms, geometry, material, quantities, ... for energy consumption modeling
  • Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) BAUnit : lots of data common to EPC but mostly a separate data collection and processing
  • Housing Contract BAUnit : number of rooms, type and surface thereof, HVAC, ...
  • Commercial Surface BAUnit : surface subject to a non residential tax,
  • Office Surface BAUnit : type of usage, surface subject to a non residential tax,
  • Regulated Parking BAUnit : type and number of places, electric charging stations, ...
  • ...

This is not always the case and some countries and localities have already adopted a more streamlined approach which often relies on BIM.

However, generally speaking, adoption of standards is infrequent or incomplete and the number of distinct data formats, streams and disparate semantics becomes increasingly problematic. This raises issues for all stakeholders: Public Services agents, involved Parties (Constituents, AECO profesionals, Advisors / SMEs for the RRR/BAUnit domain).

Opportunity

Interestingly, the AECO standardization has evolved towards a broader scope and a better coverage of all elements related to Buildings and Infrastructures.

One of these new features is the introduction in BIM / IFC of Spatial Zones as a way to organize data with regards to a particuliar aspect (security, thermal load, ...).

As reflected in the schema hereafter, there is then a unique opportunity to leverage BIM standards to create a foundation for managing all data for Spatial Unit that underpin their relationship to the corresponding BAUnit.

flowchart LR
    Party
    RRR
    BAUnit
    SpatialUnit
    Party --> RRR 
    RRR --> BAUnit
    BAUnit --> SpatialUnit
    subgraph d4SU
        Building --> SpatialZone
        SpatialZone --> Data
        Data["Appropriate Data pertaining to the Spatial Unit related to the BAUnit"]
    end
    SpatialZone --> SpatialUnit
    Data --> BAUnit

The progress of the BIM / IFC standards are impressive and important to make this all possible. But that would remain difficult to achieve without the progress made in the availability of Open Source software that makes the access to BIM / IFC simple and efficient. Notably, IfcOpenShell libraries and tools supports all Create, Read, Udpate, Delete (CRUD) on IFC and ThatOpen libraries and Tools provide effective visualization capabilities.

Other tools, that often leverage these Open Source toolboxes and platforms, cater for extra capabilites.

Therefore, BIM / IFC can be leveraged to access existing data provided by AECO software but also to enrich / augment data for specific needs.

This is indeed critically important given that IFC files coming out of the AECO industry are focused on the need of that industry and not on the needs of registering RRR on BAUnits related to Spatial Units. There is therefore a real need to be able to enrich / augment data to support administrative processes.

Going one step further

Beyond enabling better data management in support of administrative processes, a structured approached can also lower the cost of creating 'intelligence models' to assist / copilot the administrative processes.

flowchart LR
    subgraph ai4SU_DataSets["AI Learning Datasets"]
        Party
        RRR
        BAUnit
        SpatialUnit
        Party --> RRR 
        RRR --> BAUnit
        BAUnit --> SpatialUnit
        subgraph d4SU
            Building --> SpatialZone
            SpatialZone --> Data
            Data["Appropriate Data pertaining to the Spatial Unit related to the BAUnit"]
        end
        SpatialZone --> SpatialUnit
        Data --> BAUnit
    end
    subgraph ml4SU_Env["AI Learning Environment"]
        ai4SU_training["ai4SU Training"]
        ai4SU_engine["ai4SU Engine"]
        ai4SU_training --> ai4SU_engine
    end
    ai4SU_DataSets --> ai4SU_training
    d4SU --> ai4SU_engine
    ai4SU_engine --AI Assessment--> BAUnit

This is already a research topic, but effective deployment of models will be impeded by the current scarcity of strutured 'normalized' data. The approach that underpins d4SU will help provide those much needed data.