Investigating the role of building information models as a part of an integrated data layer: A fire response management case

Building information modelling has emerged to address the issues associated with information integration and interoperability in the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. Today, building information models (BIMs) have become capable of representing detailed geometrical and semantic information about building elements. On the other hand, some urban management tasks, such as disaster management, delivery of goods and services, and cityscape visualization, are managed by using a geographic information system (GIS) as the current state-of-the-art system, as these tasks require a high level and volume of integrated geospatial information. Several of these tasks, such as fire response management, also require detailed geometrical and semantic information about buildings in order to become facilitated through better automation. In this context, this paper first presents an approach proposed for integrating building and geospatial information models and later presents a fire response management case where the integration approach is implemented. The paper starts with a summary of the background on building information modelling and the role of GIS in fire response management before providing an introduction to the software systems integration and the concept of integrated data layers. The paper then explains the integrated data layers approach proposed during the research and the implementation of the approach in the domain of fire response management. The research results confirmed that the proposed approach is applicable in the domain of fire response management and further investigation demonstrated that the use of BIMs as part of an integrated data layer enables the fire response management process to be facilitated through better automation.