<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Over the recent years, the usage of semantic web technologies and Resources Description Framework (RDF) data models have been notably increased in many fields. Multiple systems are using RDF data to describe information resources and semantic associations. RDF data plays a very important role in advanced information retrieval, and graphs are efficient ways to visualize and represent real world data by providing solutions to many real-time scenarios that can be simulated and implemented using graph databases, and efficiently query graphs with multiple attributes representing different domains of knowledge. Given that graph databases are schema less with efficient storage for semi-structured data, they can provide fast and deep traversals instead of slow RDBMS SQL based joins allowing Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and durability (ACID) transactions with rollback support, and by utilizing mathematics of graph they can enormous potential for fast data extraction and storage of information in the form of nodes and relationships. In this paper, we are presenting an architectural design with complete implementation of BIM-GIS integrated RDF graph database. The proposed integration approach is composed of four main phases: ontological BIM and GIS model’s construction, mapping and semantic integration using interoperable data formats, then an import into a graph database with querying and filtering capabilities. The workflows and transformations of IFC and CityGML schemas into object graph databases model are developed and applied to an intelligent urban mobility web application on a game engine platform validate the integration methodology.</p>

ABSTRACT:In recent years, 3D virtual indoor/outdoor urban modelling becomes a key spatial information framework for many civil and engineering applications such as evacuation planning, emergency and facility management. For accomplishing such sophisticate decision tasks, there is a large demands for building multi-scale and multi-sourced 3D urban models. Currently, Building Information Model (BIM) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are broadly used as the modelling sources. However, data sharing and exchanging information between two modelling domains is still a huge challenge; while the syntactic or semantic approaches do not fully provide exchanging of rich semantic and geometric information of BIM into GIS or vice-versa. This paper proposes a novel approach for integrating BIM and GIS using semantic web technologies and Resources Description Framework (RDF) graphs. The novelty of the proposed solution comes from the benefits of integrating BIM and GIS technologies into one unified model, so-called Integrated Geospatial Information Model (IGIM). The proposed approach consists of three main modules: BIM-RDF and GIS-RDF graphs construction, integrating of two RDF graphs, and query of information through IGIM-RDF graph using SPARQL. The IGIM generates queries from both the BIM and GIS RDF graphs resulting a semantically integrated model with entities representing both BIM classes and GIS feature objects with respect to the target-client application. The linkage between BIM-RDF and GIS-RDF is achieved through SPARQL endpoints and defined by a query using set of datasets and entity classes with complementary properties, relationships and geometries. To validate the proposed approach and its performance, a case study was also tested using IGIM system design. * Corresponding Author

Abstract. The semantic integration modeling of BIM industry foundations classes and GIS City-geographic markup language are a milestone for many applications that involve both domains of knowledge. In this paper, we propose a system design architecture, and implementation of Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) workflows of BIM and GIS model into RDF graph database model, these workflows were created from functional components and ontological frameworks supporting RDF SPARQL and graph databases Cypher query languages. This paper is about full understanding of whether RDF graph database is suitable for a BIM-GIS integrated information model, and it looks deeper into the assessment of translation workflows and evaluating performance metrics of a BIM-GIS integrated data model managed in an RDF graph database, the process requires designing and developing various pipelines of workflows with semantic tools in order to get the data and its structure into an appropriate format and demonstrate the potential of using RDF graph databases to integrate, manage and analyze information and relationships from both GIS and BIM models, the study also has introduced the concepts of Graph-Model occupancy indexes of nodes, attributes and relationships to measure queries outputs and giving insights on data richness and performance of the resulting BIM-GIS semantically integrated model.