Advancing in Object-Based Landscape Information Modeling: Challenges and Future Needs: Fid-Bau Portal

Advancing in Object-Based Landscape Information Modeling: Challenges and Future Needs

Abdirad, Hamid / Lin, Ken-Yu

The AEC/FM industry has benefited from the innovative integration of information technologies and industry-wide processes in different lifecycle stages of facilities. Building Information Modeling (BIM), as one of these innovations, is fast becoming a key approach to virtually integrate the required information for facility design, construction, and management. So far, applications and benefits of using BIM tools and processes in building design and construction have been documented in research. However, landscape design and construction practice is underrated in current BIM developments and in integrated design-construction practices, and it has not benefited from the advantages BIM provides to the industry at different scales. This could result in a critical challenge, as BIM implementation and information modeling are becoming mandatory in many projects in public and private sectors, and the gap still exists in the processes of collaboration and information exchange between the landscape design and construction practice and other disciplines. As an early step to mitigate this challenge, this study shows that recent advances in BIM, COBie, information-exchange schemas (e.g. IFC), and taxonomies such as OmniClass have shortcomings in addressing landscape and hardscape elements and attributes. This challenge limits asset-management capabilities, and leads the practice to inefficient operations, more manual processes, and costly knowledge development and exchange. These findings have important implications for revising and updating existing taxonomies to support more automated information development and exchange processes.