FYPs/Thesis/Journal from Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong

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Institution Title Type Date Author(s) Abstract Link
HKUST Mapping of BIM and GIS for Interoperable Geospatial Data Management and Analysis for the Built Environment Thesis 08/2015 Yichuan DENG The Building Information Modeling (BIM) domain and the Geographic Information System (GIS) domain share a mutual need for information from each other. Information from GIS can facilitate BIM applications such as site selection and onsite material layout, while models from BIM help generate detailed models in GIS and achieve better utility management. The mapping between the key schemas in the BIM domain and the GIS domain is the most critical step towards interoperability between the two domains. In this research, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) were chosen as the key schemas due to their wide applications in the BIM domain and the GIS domain, respectively. A review of previous studies on the integration between BIM and GIS reveals that so far there is no bi-directional mapping considering both geometric and semantic information between IFC and CityGML. Moreover, the transformation between different Levels of Detail (LoDs) in 3D GIS models has not been fully studied. The objective of this research is to develop techniques and tools to allow bi-directional mapping between key schemas in the BIM domain and the GIS domain considering transformation of geometry, semantic information and LoDs. Three use cases based on the integration between BIM and GIS are presented to show how the integration can facilitate problem solving in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.

First, the sufficiency of the IFC schema for storing GIS data was evaluated using text analysis techniques and version different analysis. An extension for IFC 4 was developed to store data from CityGML. Then a linguistic-based semi-automatic mapping framework for IFC and CityGML was developed and evaluated, which showed promising results. The bi-directional mapping between IFC and CityGML was developed using instance-based mapping with reference ontology. The mapping framework was compared to previous studies to show its effectiveness.

Second, the transformation between LoDs in 3D GIS models was developed based on the LoD definitions in CityGML. This is a critical step for mapping between BIM and GIS as 3D GIS models are usually represented in different LoDs. An exterior shell extraction algorithm was proposed to facilitate the transformation between LoDs in CityGML. The algorithms of transformation from higher LoDs to lower LoDs were developed and validated using complex and large-scale 3D GIS models.

Finally, three use cases were developed to show how BIM and GIS can facilitate problem solving in the AEC industry. The first use case aimed to build 3D noise maps for urban environments using data from BIM and GIS. The Italian C.N.R. model was used for noise prediction. The highlight of this use case study is that by using BIM and GIS integration, the noise mapping can be performed at room level and the design models can be flexibly updated. The second use case considered construction supply chain management (CSCM) using BIM and GIS integration. The allocation of consolidation centers for multiple construction sites, which is a problem seldom studied by previous literature, is formulated and solved by integrating BIM and GIS. The third case aimed to develop a 3D underground utility management system for urban environments. The system uses modeling functions in BIM as data sources for utility management. Moreover, an algorithm was developed to allow transforming 2D CAD drawings into 3D utility lines.
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HKUST Rebar Prefabrication Automation Leveraging BIM Technology FYP 06/2020 LEUNG, Jing
WONG, Ngo Nam Andrew
The construction industry attempts to focus on innovative construction methods and the use of IT to enhance productivity. In recent years, the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology is more common in the market. BIM provides a platform for data exchange of different parties without any format conversion which facilitates cross-discipline communication. The Hong Kong government has been the pioneer in applying BIM in the design of some government capital projects to foster its usage in HK. However, BIM facilitates the stage of planning and designing, there should be ways to improve the performance in the construction stage. Dynamo is a built-in software of Revit to be used in this project to develop the construction information technology.

The objectives of this report are to introduce the use of Dynamo scripts for the generation of BVBS code, barcode, schedule, and drawings for automatic rebar fabrication with the assistance of Dynamo to a Revit BIM model. With the automatic generation and implementation of IT, time can be shortened and accuracy can be enhanced. By running the Dynamo scripts in this research, standardized detailed drawings and bar bending schedules can also be obtained automatically.
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HKUST A Building Information Modeling Framework for Waste Estimation and Embodied Carbon Calculation of Buildings Thesis 08/2012 Yinghui MA The construction industry is a major consumer of natural resources and energy, and a major contributor of waste and carbon emissions. Many countries have taken initiatives to reduce the negative environmental impacts in terms of waste and carbon emissions caused by construction activities; however, implementations of those strategies are often based on experience and heuristics rather than quantitative data. The value of estimating and evaluating construction and demolition (C&D) waste and carbon emissions in the construction industry has been indicated in literature. Nevertheless, tools that can accurately and conveniently estimate the amount of the waste from construction projects are lacking. On the other hand, current carbon emission analysis tools mostly focus on the estimation of operational carbon. Although embodied carbon (EC) of building materials has shown increasingly important in carbon emission analysis of buildings, the current tools that estimate EC are still primitive and not automated.

Therefore, this study aims to develop a framework for a lifecycle evaluation of waste and carbon emissions of buildings leveraging the building information modeling (BIM) technology. BIM represents the process of development and use of a computer generated model to simulate the planning, design, construction and operation of a building facility. BIM has been increasingly used in the architectural, engineering and construction industry for building performance analysis and construction planning. However, the use of BIM for estimation and planning of C&D waste and EC is still lacking. This thesis presents the automated BIM-based C&D waste estimation system and the automated BIM-based EC estimation system that the author has developed. The first system was designed to extract material and volume information through the BIM model and integrate the information for detailed waste estimation and planning. The second system was designed to integrate extracted material and element information with external carbon inventory databases for embodied carbon and energy estimation.

With the two systems, decision making could be facilitated among clients, architects, engineers, and other stakeholders. The systems can also be used combined with current tools to perform a lifecycle analysis. As the BIM technology has been increasingly adopted and digital building information models will likely to be available for most buildings and even infrastructures in the future, our systems can be applied in various projects.
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HKUST A state-of-the-art review on the integration of building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) Journal 02/2017 Liu, X., Wang, X., Wright, G., Cheng, J.C.P., Li, X., and Liu, R. The integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS) has been identified as a promising but challenging topic to transform information towards the generation of knowledge and intelligence. Achievement of integrating these two concepts and enabling technologies will have a significant impact on solving problems in the civil, building and infrastructure sectors. However, since GIS and BIM were originally developed for different purposes, numerous challenges are being encountered for the integration. To better understand these two different domains, this paper reviews the development and dissimilarities of GIS and BIM, the existing integration methods, and investigates their potential in various applications. This study shows that the integration methods are developed for various reasons and aim to solve different problems. The parameters influencing the choice can be summarized and named as “EEEF” criteria: effectiveness, extensibility, effort, and flexibility. Compared with other methods, semantic web technologies provide a promising and generalized integration solution. However, the biggest challenges of this method are the large efforts required at early stage and the isolated development of ontologies within one particular domain. The isolation problem also applies to other methods. Therefore, openness is the key of the success of BIM and GIS integration. Link
HKUST Trends and opportunities of BIM-GIS integration in the architecture, engineering and construction industry: A review from a spatio-temporal statistical perspective Journal 12/2017 Song, Y., Wang, X., Tan, Y., Wu, P., Sutrisna, M., Cheng, J.C.P., et al. The integration of building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) in construction management is a new and fast developing trend in recent years, from research to industrial practice. BIM has advantages on rich geometric and semantic information through the building life cycle, while GIS is a broad field covering geovisualization-based decision making and geospatial modelling. However, most current studies of BIM-GIS integration focus on the integration techniques but lack theories and methods for further data analysis and mathematic modelling. This paper reviews the applications and discusses future trends of BIM-GIS integration in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry based on the studies of 96 high-quality research articles from a spatio-temporal statistical perspective. The analysis of these applications helps reveal the evolution progress of BIM-GIS integration. Results show that the utilization of BIM-GIS integration in the AEC industry requires systematic theories beyond integration technologies and deep applications of mathematical modeling methods, including spatio-temporal statistical modeling in GIS and 4D/nD BIM simulation and management. Opportunities of BIM-GIS integration are outlined as three hypotheses in the AEC industry for future research on the in-depth integration of BIM and GIS. BIM-GIS integration hypotheses enable more comprehensive applications through the life cycle of AEC projects. Link
HKUST Mapping BIM schema and 3D GIS schema semi-automatically utilizing linguistic and text mining techniques Journal 01/2015 Cheng, J.C.P., Deng, Y.C., and Anumba, C. The interoperability between BIM (Building Information Modeling) and 3D GIS (Geographic Information System) can enhance the functionality of both domains. BIM can serve as an information source for 3D GIS, while 3D GIS could provide neighboring information for BIM to perform view analysis, sustainable design and simulations. Data mapping is critical for seamless information sharing between BIM and GIS models. However, given the complexity of todayÕs BIM schemas and GIS schemas, the manual mapping between them is always time consuming and error prone. This paper presents a semi-automatic framework that we have developed to facilitate schema mapping between BIM schemas and GIS schemas using linguistic and text-mining techniques. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) in the BIM domain and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) in the GIS domain were used in this paper. Entity names and definitions from both schemas were used as the knowledge corpus, and text-mining techniques such as Cosine Similarity, Market Basket Model, Jaccard Coefficient, term frequency and inverse document frequency were applied to generate mapping candidates. Instance-based manual mapping between IFC and CityGML were used to evaluate the results from the linguistic-based mapping. The results show that our proposed name-to-definition comparison could achieve a high precision and recall. Results using different similarity measures were also compared and discussed. The framework proposed in this paper could serve as a semi-automatic way for schema mapping of other schemas and domains. Link