Editorial Vol. 13

From the city to the building (and back): interoperable approaches between spatial information systems and BIM-based models

In recent years, the field of geographic information systems (GIS) has been strongly influenced by the evolution that the world of design is experiencing, with the shift from predominantly two-dimensional vector drawing to the Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology. Graphical and numerical representations at the urban scale and the architectural representations have for a long time remained two separate entities for a long time, although they both refer to processes of digitizing data for the urban planning and the architectural design. In a world increasingly governed by interoperable logics and processes, it seems clear that an effective and efficient connection between these two worlds can bring about important evolutions in the field of the design, through the enhancement of  data as a central element of the whole process. Moreover, we also witness the increasing possibility of using data from both urban and building scales intercepted by sensors and trackers, capable of revealing the operation and use both within a digitized existing and within a world still to be designed.

The information provided by GIS systems allows interventions to be prefigured at the urban scale, holding together a multiplicity of variables peculiar to the territorial and infrastructural system, reducing the number of errors especially in the preliminary and feasibility plan phase. On the other hand, project information, particularly those related to the actual implementation of the work, are of fundamental importance for updating GIS systems. In addition, reading data from the world of applied sensing adds additional variables and new possible uses.

On the direction of these different approaches leading back to the domains of the city or architecture and their mutual contamination, the different contributions are organized using common grounds of interchange increasingly aimed at the network, transferring the useful elements of  the “design” from whatever source they come from within information systems of urban and territorial scale.

The experiments collected here are often aimed at the development of predictive strategies in terms of risk prevention, management of the existing, management of the operation of large public activities in existing buildings and new planning.

Specific themes to modeling activities \at any scale are mentioned in all of the research, i.e., the complexity of data exchange between different platforms or interoperability between several systems, modeling by nodes embedded in domains of object modeling, use of algorithms at different scales, management of databases or synchronously sensed data. 

The experiments are anticipated by an essay on the state of the art of the BIM – GIS dialogue, which first denotes that this research domain is still in full development and particularly fertile for possible applications that are still too immature to be considered technically definitive. 

That leaves at the moment applied research with all the solutions in fieri useful for determining lines of direction for transferring new skills, creating increasingly strong and structured connections between the academic world of research and the world of the profession.