A Web3D Enabled Information Integration Framework for Facility Management

Abstract

Managing capital oil and gas and civil engineering facilities requires a large amount of heterogeneous information that is generated by different project stakeholders across the facility lifecycle phases and is stored in various databases and technical documents. The amount of information reaches its peak during the commissioning and handover phases when the project is handed over to the operator. The operational phase of facilities spans multiple decades and the way facilities are used and maintained have a huge impact on costs, environment, productivity, and health and safety. Thus, the client and the operator bear most of the additional costs associated with incomplete, incorrect or not immediately usable information.Web applications can provide quick and convenient access to information regardless of user location. However, the integration and delivery of engineering information, including 3D content, over the Web is still at its infancy and is affected by numerous technical (i.e. data and tools) and procedural (i.e. process and people) challenges. This paper addresses the technical issues and proposes a Web3D enabled information integration framework that delivers engineering information together with 3D content without any plug-ins. In the proposed framework, a class library defines the engineering data requirements and a semistructured database provides means to integrate heterogeneous technical asset information. This framework also enables separating the 3D model content into fragments, storing them together with the digital assets and delivering to the client browser on demand. Such framework partially alleviates the current limitations of the JavaScript based 3D content delivery such as application speed and latency. Hence, the proposed framework is particularly valuable to petroleum and civil engineering companies working with large amounts of data.

Interpreted open data exchange between architectural design and structural analysis models

“…For data storage, a semi-structured database (MongoDB) was chosen. The advantage of a semi-structured database rather than a relational database is the flexibility it provides to support unexpected information (Rasys et al, 2014, Lee et al, 2014.…”

Integrating Augmented Reality into Building Information Modeling for Facility Management Case Studies

“…A poor implementation of the process is typically associated with incomplete, incorrect or not immediately usable engineering information. As reported by Rasys et al (2014), the effective integration and delivery of such information are primarily challenged by the technical and procedural processing such as recognizing the facility location, optimizing the FM workflow, and so on. This study accordingly aims at addressing the information accessibility issue which widely exists in the traditional manner of conducting FM, such as, how to quickly and accurately acquire the information.…”

An Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) Web-Based Approach and Platform for Bi-Drectional Conversion of Structural Analysis Models

“…Also WebGL applications that support IFC-format, such as BIMSurfer and IfcWebViewer, have been developed. In other industries where very large data sets and models are utilized such as the oil and gas sector, the development of WebGL-based information integration approaches and technologies is under way (Rasys et al, 2013). WebGL is emerging as one of the most popular frameworks for the 3D content presentation over the Web (Ortiz Jr., 2010).…”

“…WebGL is emerging as one of the most popular frameworks for the 3D content presentation over the Web (Ortiz Jr., 2010). In this research, Three.js, a fast object oriented JavaScript library that support file formats and math operations (Rasys et al, 2013), is utilized to develop the application for displaying 3D elements on the Web.…”