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BIM-GIS-IoT-Based System: History

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Subjects: Engineering, Civil

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Integrate Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into a geographic information system (GIS) to achieve scientific and reasonable recycling for excavated soil, which could collaboratively manage information from the government, developers, construction enterprises, transportation companies, and recycling facilities to meet the requirement for the specific communication, analysis, decision-making, and recycling plan preparation of the excavation project. In addition, it provides a systematic method and applies relevant information technology required to recycle the excavated soil effectively in the excavation project. The system is intended to provide a fundamental digital construction model for excavated soil recycling, regardless of whether it is invoked by the existing application software or a program tailored to the demands of a specific organization or stakeholders. It makes excellent use of the rich information stored in digital information models, may create a mapping to the input data required by the application, or automatically convert the basic model to facilitate the specific analysis. This system can not only serve as an excavation project simulation tool before construction, but also serve as a tool to recycle the excavated soil and cost evaluation.

recycling
BIM-GIS-IoT-based
system

1. Introduction

With the acceleration of urbanization, the construction industry has grown leaps and bounds, generating sky-high amounts of construction and demolition (C&D) waste (mainly excavated soil, concrete, masonry, wood, plastic, glass, waste paper, rubber) in the city-building campaign of Renewal in developing countries [1]. In order to reduce the threat and impact of these wastes on the environment, some local government authorities and related industries stipulate that enterprises and individuals who generate, transport, and discharge C&D wastes need to adopt corresponding measures and means to promote the source reduction in C&D wastes [2,3,4,5]. Soil excavation is among the fundamental facets of infrastructure development [6]. Few infrastructure building activities can be done without excavation, especially in the urban Renewal of metropolitan regions, where underground space is inevitable as obtaining new land is typically tricky [7]. The excavation project produced significant volumes of excavated excess soils. According to Eurostat, excavated soil is Europe’s most significant source of rubbish. In several European nations, excavated dirt dumped in landfills without recycling has become a significant problem [8]. As the most significant component of C&D waste [9,10,11], the amount of excavated soil exceeds the total amount of municipal and another C&D waste was mainly transferred to landfills, accounting for more than 50% of the total landfill volume [8]. However, there are no longer enough landfills in the cities to accommodate this excavated soil. Some megacities have established several excavated soil recycling plants to resolve the above problems. However, the disposal of the excavated soil mainly relies on the manual coordination of government, developers, construction companies, transportation companies, and waste recycling facilities to recycle excavated soil. It is challenging to communicate effectively between all construction participants. The phenomenon of “Information Isolated Island” is severe. There is often a contradictory situation that it is challenging to transport the excavated soil from the excavation projects on one hand, while on the other hand, there is no excavated soil to collect for the recycling plant. As Omar pointed out, “the unmanageable waste generated during the construction process is mainly due to poor coordination between the various participants in the chain [12]”. Therefore, it is necessary to find an effective method to overcome the difficulties above. The current research about the reuse and recycling of C&D waste mainly focuses on the demolition waste (concrete, masonry) generated in the demolition stage [13,14,15,16,17,18]. There is little research on excavated soil reuse and recycling [19,20]. Building information modeling (BIM) is a spatial and data transmission technology that could be systematically and effectively linked with IoT and GIS technologies to realize the efficient communication of all the stakeholders during construction [21]. BIM refers to creating and employing a digital model to simulate a construction project’s planning, design, construction, and operation. Moreover, it is a data-rich, object-oriented, intelligent, and parametric digital representation of the building facility [22]. BIM has become a popular research topic for estimating and managing C&D waste.

This paper presents a BIM-GIS-IoT-based system that we developed for excavated soil recycling. To that recycling purpose, it has two specific goals:

(1): A helpful operation platform for excavated soil recycling to explore cross applications in the knowledge of BIM, IoT technology, GIS, excavated soil recycling technology, and building construction. The platform collaboratively manages information from the government, developers, construction enterprises, transportation companies, and recycling plants, considering the links between soil excavation, transportation, and recycling.
(2): To realize the process integration, the object integration, and the platform integration.

2. BIM, and Integration of Information Technology

BIM includes modeling and analysis software, BIM model conversion tools, multi-source data fusion technology, Web GL, Active X, HTML5, cloud technology, and 3S technology [23]. The kernel of BIM is “information”, which assists construction stakeholders to collaborate and stay informed about one another’s operations. The information integration in the construction industry has transformed due to increased BIM usage, which has improved the whole construction process interoperability, information sharing, visualization, and decision-making processes [24]. BIM offers a collection of related and cross-referenced information, however, it also generates a 3D visual interface from a 2D drawing to aid management choices for various stakeholders and demands during the project’s construction. Then, BIM provides a platform for efficient communication and cooperation among stakeholders from different construction participants to overcome the phenomenon of “Information Isolated Island.” BIM has been widely utilized in the construction industry recently.

Some scholars tried to use BIM technology for C&D waste management. Jongsung Won used BIM technology to conduct crash tests at the design stage to avoid construction waste due to design errors. He studied two cases in Korea where 381 and 136 design errors were detected in the BIM model crash tests, respectively, and the results showed that BIM-based crash tests could reduce construction waste by 4.3–15.2% [25]. Lu introduces the application of BIM in construction waste management and identifies two critical prerequisites for “information preparation” and “computational algorithms” to facilitate construction waste management decisions [26]. Beatriz proposed a 4D-BIM model integrating temporary elements in 3D technology for planning the reuse and recycling of concrete and drywall waste from construction projects [27]. Koutamanis found that as a system of information integration and consolidation, BIM can coordinate stakeholders and their actions to achieve high accuracy, reliability, and efficiency in building construction and demolition [28]. Cheng proposed an information management system based on BIM technology to estimate construction waste generated by demolition and urban refinement. The system contains several functions for resource utilization, predicting the quantity of construction waste outbound truck demand, and predicting construction waste disposal fees [29]. Hamidi presented a demolition waste management system based on BIM [30]. Liu developed “a framework for minimizing construction waste based on BIM technology”, which aims to be an integrated platform to guide decision-makers and designers to avoid construction waste generation during the design phase by providing known BIM models [31]. Kim created a BIM-based framework for estimating demolition waste early in the design phase to ensure effective and simplified recycling waste management [32]. Xu constructed a BIM-based construction waste information management system (IMS) that provided accurate construction waste information and a detailed information estimation process and proposed a mathematical formula including several GHG emission factors [33].

Even though these studies give important references for using BIM in excavation projects, some problems limit excavated soil recycling and the BIM platform’s potential functions. Currently, the main application of BIM mentioned above tends to be for single buildings’ C&D waste management. However, BIM does not perform well for large-scale regional objects such as geomorphology, underground pipelines, and underground tunnels. Excavation projects involve collecting and using data on the geomorphology of the construction site, underground pipelines, and underground tunnels in the process of implementation. In this case, BIM and GIS need to be integrated to achieve these functions. GIS is a technology for collecting, storing, managing, computing, analyzing, displaying, and describing data about geographic distribution on the earth’s surface (including the atmosphere) space [34]. GIS has the functions of acquiring, storing, displaying, editing, processing, analyzing, outputting, and applying spatial data. Topological data is provided by GIS, allowing for 3D analysis, geographical analysis, and queries such as calculating the distance between two places, computing routes, and determining the best site [35]. GIS collects and analyzes geographic data to visualize location-based applications [36]. The integration of BIM and GIS enables BIM to obtain information about surrounding conditions through GIS in the planning, design, construction, and recycling process. For example, basic information on topography, electricity, communications, and gas can be obtained from GIS. Measures can be taken to avoid these problems or protect the aforementioned infrastructures during the excavation project’s planning, design, and construction. In this way, geographical information about the surrounding conditions becomes essential for building engineering information in BIM. Through a unified database, users of BIM can make use of information from GIS in addition to BIM’s data. However, achieving the integration of BIM and GIS and improving the value of the use of both data is a significant difficulty for BIM+GIS applications. Yamamura proposes to carry out the integration of BIM and GIS, and first needs to coordinate conversion and data alignment, BIM and GIS models, terrain, and other multi-source data unified to a coordinate system, to achieve a variety of information alignment. The data mosaic, flattening, cropping, and other operations and processing achieve smooth data convergence texture stitching naturally [37]. El Meouche investigated multiple approaches to integrating BIM and GIS. However, he did not propose a system architecture to integrate the technologies [38].

Existing BIM and GIS software programs (Revit, Project Wise Navigator, SuperMap Beijing, China) for data transmission and the management of buildings project processes are efficient. They can better synthesize information from the excavation venture into a digital model and convey it in 3D graphics to each person concerned with the invocation of the model. The digital models of BIM and GIS are ordinarily up to date by using manually inputted applicable data. So updating and real-time invocation information from the rapidly changing construction site turns into an impossible mission. Relying only on BIM and GIS technologies cannot recycle the excavated soil well. Meeting the requirement for managing construction sites of the excavation project in real-time is essential in linking virtual digital models to reality to collect and exchange data. Being one of the advanced core technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) can provide real-time data to BIM-GIS to link physical resources with virtual digital models [39]. Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted the attention of academics, enterprises, and even government entities [40]. IoT is now being used in the construction industry to help with data collection and decision-making. It is an intelligent network comprising RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags, NFC (Near Field Communication) tags, and GPS (Global Positioning System) sensors [41]. The IoT technology, which automatically detects, controls, and programs objects [42], enables its surroundings to be connected and interact directly and indirectly. The IoT connects items to the Internet and uses that connection to allow remote monitoring and control of those objects. Thus, the spatial-temporal information of excavated soil can be collected in real-time to support construction management, transportation management, and recycling through IoT technology.

Nowadays, integrating GIS with BIM has become a trend for digital construction applications. As such, the real-time information about the construction site is inputted into the BIM-GIS digital model through IoT to form the essential information required for constructing the building. Moreover, the service-oriented architecture (SOA) is utilized to construct GIS-IoT-enabled BIM systems by mixing various web services [43]. Few research efforts on leveraging the integration of BIM in the C&D waste management process are relatively scarce compared to those utilizing BIM only, and almost none in excavated soil recycling. The excavation project involves five components in its implementation: planning; design; construction; transportation; and recycling. Information about individual buildings, geological features, hydrological environment, underground pipelines, construction capacity, transport capacity, and recycling must be integrated and updated throughout the excavation project. The existing single information technology is unable to meet these functional requirements. Thus, integrating BIM, GIS, and IoT is crucial for resolving such problems.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/buildings12040457

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