A BIM-Oriented Model for supporting indoor navigation requirements
Introduction
As city models used in practice focus on representing the outdoor environment and building facades, the information provision by them related to indoors still remains limited. Therefore, many actors of the indoor navigation process use their own information sources, such as emergency responders who maintain their own 2D maps (called ‘access maps’) to determine the location of entrances in public buildings (Diehl et al., 2006, Scholten et al., 2008, Snoeren et al., 2007, van Oosterom and Zlatanova, 2008). However, current studies on user requirements points towards an increased interest in 3D indoor information for navigation (Lee, 2009, Lee and Zlatanova, 2008, Zlatanova, 2008). Thill, Dao, and Zhou (2011) states that the ability to understand complex spatial and functional relationship in the contemporary 3D city is enhanced by a 3D representation of the indoor and outdoor infrastructure on which people plan and realize their travel activities. In recent years, research has been reported on the development of 3D models that can represent floor and apartment structure (including rooms, floors, doors and windows) and the use of them in analysis related to disasters, evacuation and navigation (i.e. Kwan & Lee, 2005; CityGML (OGC, 2008), Isikdag et al., 2008, Lee and Zlatanova, 2008, Lee, 2009, Kemec et al., 2009, Kim and Jun, 2009). However, the major barrier preventing the use of these models in real life has been the lack of models providing ‘appropriate and applicable’ representations of building geometry and detailed semantics of indoors. The models developed are either too complex to query, not geo-referenced, defined with complex geometric representations (i.e. CSG) or do not provide sufficient level of semantic information for supporting indoor navigation.
Recent research denotes Building Information Models (BIMs) and CityGML as valuable information sources for facilitating indoor navigation. A BIM is a digital representation of all the physical and functional characteristics of a building through its entire life cycle (Isıkdag et al., 2007, NBIMS, 2006). The 3D City Modeling Standard CityGML and its Level of Detail (LOD) 4 offers possibilities to represent interiors of buildings with their geometry, semantics, topology and appearance (OGC, 2008). Research has been already reported on using this model to derive information appropriate for navigation (Becker, Nagel, & Kolbe, 2009). These models have been considered in the development of the novel model presented in this paper. This paper presents a new indoor modeling methodology and a novel model BO-IDM, developed with the focus of facilitating indoor navigation and orientation. The model utilizes ISO 19107 compliant data types and is populated as a result of information transformation from an IFC BIM. The paper is organized as follows. Next section establishes conceptual requirements for indoor navigation. Section 3 elaborates on the information representation in building models, and their role of being information sources for indoor navigation. Section 4 presents the details of the new model (BO-IDM) that focuses on supporting indoor navigation requirements. Section 5 illustrates the applicability of the new model using a specific platform (i.e. ArcGIS) and discusses the results of the interoperability validation exercise completed using this novel model. Section 6 concludes by outlining the advantages of using the model in support of indoor navigation and overviews the future developments.
Section snippets
Conceptual requirements for indoor navigation
Semantically rich 3D models can provide critical information for navigation that cannot be found in traditional 2D representations. Many authors have already investigated information models that can be of interest for indoor navigation (i.e. Brown et al., 2012, Diehl et al., 2006, Hijazi et al., 2011, Isikdag, 2006, Isikdag et al., 2008, Yuan and Zizhang, 2008, Zlatanova, 2008). Based on these investigations, the ‘Çonceptual Requirements for a Building Model for Supporting and Facilitating
Information models for indoor navigation
Indoor navigation requires the use of a number of interrelated building representations. Meijers et al., 2005, Becker et al., 2009 based on Lee, 2004, Lee and Zlatanova, 2008 propose that primal and dual models of buildings can be constructed for various conceptual/physical spaces. Primal models include a geometric representation in 3D Euclidean Space and a topology representation for expressing the relationships between building elements. Dual(s) of these models are a network (metric graph)
The BIM Oriented Indoor Data Model (BO-IDM)
As the BIMs might be very complex, a new BIM Oriented information model was envisaged with a less complex structure. Additionally, the model needs to compliant with ISO 19107 standard to allow for integrated indoor/outdoor navigation. For example, Fig. 2 depicts the result of a BIM based egress route analysis. The blue line(s) illustrated over the slabs point out the shortest path(s) from each room to the fire exit. This result can point out a certain door as an exit point of the route. In
Model implementation
The model is tested with an emergency response scenario for the Greater Municipality of Istanbul. As emergency response operations are usually managed using a GIS within the Greater Municipality of Istanbul, the transfer of building information into a geoinformation model was the main requirement. The requirements gathered indicated that the BO-IDM conceptual model needs to be implemented for ESRI ptaform, i.e. using ArcGIS geometries and Geodatabase. Only the Parts classes of BO-IDM (WallPart,
Conclusions
Indoor Navigation requires the use of a number of interrelated models of buildings for the calculation of navigation paths, visualization of the navigation, and for assisting the actors in the navigation process. The motivation behind the work presented was to facilitate intelligent indoor navigation by providing detailed semantic information along with 3D geometries. Based on the analysis, BIMs appear as the most detailed resources of semantic information, and they were used as basis for
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3D computer vision approach, with the aid of transfer learning, for joint 3D reconstruction and visual inspection of buildings. A new methodology framework is established to integrate the mechanism of 3D scene reconstruction with the transfer learning model towards automated identification of building surface defects on reconstructed 3D scenes. Defect identification and visualisation are accomplished with a revamped ResNet-50 model and Grad-CAM technique. The overlayed images with defects information are prepared as inputs for 3D reconstruction along with depth maps, which are realised by AD-census cost computation and semi-global matching optimisation algorithms. The proposed new methods are demonstrated via an illustrative example which promptly detects surface defects on the 3D scene and underpins smart facility maintenance management.- 1
Address: GIS Technology, OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 9, Delft 2628 BX, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 (0)15 278 2714; fax: +31 (0)15 278 2244.
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Address: School of the Built Environment, University of Salford, Maxwell Building, Salford M5 4WT, UK. Tel.: +44 (0)161 295 6290; fax: +44 (0)161 295 5011.