Ontologies in Building Construction: an alternative to the problem of interoperability using IFC
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/gtp.v9i2.69141Keywords:
Building Information Modeling (BIM), Interoperability, IFC.Abstract
Interoperability, i.e., the possibility to exchange information between distinct software, in a transparent way, by means of a digital model, is one of the major benefits promised and still not fully accomplished with Building Information Modeling (BIM) embracing. The open data schema Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) was created to favor interoperability and it was largely incorporated by most of the software companies. It comprehends a set of classes that represents a building in its whole life-cycle. However, to contemplate the needs from different professionals that deal with the model, and demand distinct information and representations for the same building element, many of the implementation details were not specified. Thus, parts of the model can be represented in different ways, by each of the different software used by actors in the process, making interoperability difficult and generating the necessity of manual reworking of the model at each exchange. One alternative to this problem is the creation of a layer of common meaning - ontology – to regulate the exchanges. This article presents, discusses and compares two distinct approaches for the solution of the IFC interoperability problem: transforming IFC (EXPRESS) into Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the formalization of Model View Definitions (MVDs), that are used to regulate information exchange. The base of comparison between the solutions is in terms of which limitations or deficiencies of IFC could be handled with each approach.
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