Semantic interoperability in building design: Methods and tools

Semantic interoperability is a crucial element to make building information models understandable and model data sharable across multiple design disciplines and heterogeneous computer systems. This paper presents a new approach and its software implementation for the development of building design objects with semantics of interoperable information to support semantic interoperability in building designs. The novelty of the approach includes its incorporation of building design domain ontology, object-based CAD information modeling, and interoperability standard to make building information models and model data semantically interoperable. A set of methods are proposed to address the issues of object-based building information representation compliant with the Industrial Foundation Classes (IFC); extension of IFC models with the supplementary information; and semantic annotation of the interoperable and extensible information sets. The prototype implementation of these methods provides a set of Web-enabled software tools for effectively generating, managing, and reusing the semantically interoperable building objects in design applications of architectural CAD, structural analysis, and building code conformance checking.