An information model for highway operational risk management based on the IFC-Brick schema

With the development of highways, new technologies should be continuously introduced to improve highway traffic safety. Digital twin (DT) has been an emerging field of research in recent years. To develop a digital twin management system, a data model is essential. In the field of highway operational risk management (HORM), however, the development of data models is still in its infancy. Motivated by the concept of linked data, in this paper, we attempt to propose an information model for HORM. The main achievements of this paper include data architecture, identification and classification code methods, data interaction method, and the developed system. Based on data needs analysis, the highway information model architecture for risk management is defined as five layers: basic highway products, traffic sensors and equipment, traffic rules, traffic flow, and weather. Furthermore, according to the concepts of semantic data, these five layers can be classified into three categories: highway product data, topology data, and sensor data. Although the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard and Brick schema were first proposed and applied in the building domain, some of their entities and relationships can also be applied to highways. To this end, we defined some new classes, a specific ontology, and an integrated framework for HORM. Finally, a case study was carried out. Applying such information model to highways has broad potential. It changes the file-based exchange method to the data-based one, which can promote highway data exchange and applications. The proposed information model could be of great significance for HORM.