Building information modeling and ontologies: Overview of shared representations

Ontologies have been great resources to share and exchange domain knowledge in the context of BIM. Ontologies define the logic and semantics needed for BIM applications by formally classifying entities in the domain including the types, properties, relationships and other significant attributes. One major benefit of using ontologies is that the information and knowledge defined with these ontologies can be shared across the various BIM applications without divulging proprietary information. However, major challenges exist with sharing and reuse of information due to the lack of consistency, redundancy, and potential errors. This chapter explores the development of ontologies, languages, and standards to highlight the applications and deployments of shared representations of building information models. The objectives include: 1) present an overview of knowledge management in a BIM context, including the status of available standards and data exchange approaches; 2) explain the details of ontology components and the Semantic Web stack, 3) discuss the development, reusage, and management of ontologies; 4) present current AEC ontologies that can be integrated with BIM be discussed; and 5) reflect on the limitations and open challenges regarding BIM and ontologies to promote future research. Major findings highlighted in this chapter include i) perfectly interoperable integrated systems will never be fully achieved since interoperability between systems and data structures always need to be made, in which those mappings always come with ‘interpretation errors’ or ‘data loss’, ii) integrating BIM tools with other data sets predominantly including time series databases (sensor data), GIS data, and complex 3D data, into a single data storage system is neither efficient nor desirable, and iii) BIM and digital twin applications needs support from Semantic Web and linked data. Significantly, recent research and developments suggest that BIM, even with current challenges, will expand to utilization that is yet to be envisioned.