Program 2: Low Carbon Precincts
The UNSW Kensington Campus lies at the heart of an extended precinct which is the subject of intensive strategic planning and assessment as part of both the Greater Sydney Commission Randwick Collaboration Area (comprising UNSW and the four hospitals, https://www.greater.sydney/collaboration-areas) and an emerging living laboratory under Randwick City Council’s Smart Cities Strategy. The CRCLCL ran living lab workshop based around this precinct at the end of August 2018.
UNSW Estate Management has an ambitious program to create a ‘Smart Campus’ which will see the campus area more effectively managed within its boundaries and better connected beyond them to the wider precinct. This provides an opportunity, within a single jurisdiction, to re-visit some of the modelling and assessment challenges at precinct scale explored in RP2011.
This project builds on the work of RP2011 and showcase potential solutions to the challenges of modelling and managing precinct information. Recent advances in technology allow for a quick collection of 3D data and reconstruction of 3D realistic models. These come in addition to detailed 3D BIM models, which are becoming increasingly available as well. However, the integration and maintenance of such 3D data remains problematic. Data and models are scattered in different file formats and layers and maintained by different departments and institutions. This complicates the update of data and the use and re-use of information. Despite international research efforts and developments, many issues related to structuring, semantic identification and management of 3D precinct information require further investigation. This project will address two of the most challenging issues: the effective integration of BIM and GIS for precinct modelling purposes, and 3D data integration and management.
The developments will be demonstrated on a relatively small, but complex area, i.e. UNSW Kensington campus. UNSW Estate Management (EM) has been pursuing an innovative concept for 3D information management to support the concept of a “Smart Campus”. In discussions with EM, initial requirements have been identified as follows:
- The 3D data structure should be compliant with national and international open standards to facilitate exchange and update of information between different UNSW EM departments and with external parties.
- The 3D data structure should be object-oriented, semantically-rich to allow for linking geospatial information with environmental data coming from sensors, as well as energy use and carbon footprints where available, and with non-spatial data such as student curriculum, facility maintenance, event management, safety and security regulations, campus opening hours, accessibility, etc.
- This project will investigate: 1) a workflow for a 3D integration and reconstruction of the campus site from different data sources and 2) a concept for a 3D spatial data structuring. A prototype 3D workflow will be investigated, aiming at integration of 2D/3D existing data, point clouds (from different platforms), imagery/video (taken from drones or manually), BIM (as-designed and as-built), GIS and PIM. Some of the aspects to be investigated here are:
- time and effort to collect data
- resolution and accuracy
- software and file formats
- procedure for 3D reconstruction (indoor/outdoor)
- classification and semantic tagging.
The 3D spatial data infrastructure should be able to cope with existing BIM and GIS data sets, 2D and 3D, modifications of objects, their attributes and relationships and different semantics and vocabularies. Some of the aspects to be investigated during the modelling are:
- Applicability of existing standards (IFC, CityGML, IndoorGML, LADM)
- International experiences, e.g. OGC ESPRESSO project, Digital City London, Port of Rotterdam
- Vendor driven 3D models: Bentley Systems (iModel), ESRI-AutoCAD (BIM-GIS integration)
- OGC/ISO standardisation activities: BIM/GIS integration, IndoorGML initiative
- Standards Australia and CRC LCL and CRC SI experiences.
Program
Project leader
Prof Sisi Zlatanova, UNSW
Project status
Current
Project period
09/2018
- Publications
- Posters
- Partners
- News
- Students
Peer Reviewed Research Publications
Conference paper: Integration of 3D objects and terrain for 3D modelling supporting the digital twin
This is a conference paper for the 3D Geoinfo Conference 2019 (24-27 September 2019).
3D modelling of precincts and cities has significantly advanced in the last decades, as we move towards the concept of the Digital Twin. Many 3D city models have been created but a large portion of them neglect representing terrain and buildings accurately. Very often the surface is either considered planar or is not represented. On the other hand, many Digital Terrain Models (DTM) have been created as 2.5D triangular irregular networks (TIN) or grids for different applications such as water management, sign of view or shadow computation, tourism, land planning, telecommunication, military operations and communications. 3D city models need to represent both the 3D objects and terrain in one consistent model, but still many challenges remain.
A critical issue when integrating 3D objects and terrain is the identification of the valid intersection between 2.5D terrain and 3D objects. Commonly, 3D objects may partially float over or sink into the terrain; the depth of the underground parts might not be known; or the accuracy of data sets might be different. This paper discusses some of these issues and presents an approach for a consistent 3D reconstruction of LOD1 models on the basis of 3D point clouds, DTM, and 2D footprints of buildings. Such models are largely used for urban planning, city analytics or environmental analysis. The proposed method can be easily extended for higher LODs or BIM models.
integration of 3d objects and terrain for 3d modelling supporting the digital twin (4804291 PDF)
CRCLCL Project Reports
RP2011u1: Progressing Precinct Modelling on the UNSW Campus and Beyond: BIM/PIM and 3DGIS Data Inventory
This report presents results of inventory of the administrative structure of UNSW Estate Management (EM), software used, datasets and their content. The study was completed via interviews with employees of EM, and by examination of several datasets provided by Facility Management (FM) department.
Progressing Precinct Modelling on the UNSW Campus and Beyond: BIM/PIM and 3DGIS Data Inventory (2440717 PDF)
RP2011u1: Progressing precinct modelling on the UNSW campus and beyond: BIM/PIM and 3DGIS 3D PIM Modelling and Data Import
Precinct Information Modelling (PIM) describes the process of creating a virtual 3D model at precinct scale, defined as a special region in built environment. PIM contains all the information pertinent the given precinct held in different data type and supports the process of management and analysis.
This technical investigation presents the PIM data schema and database design. The schema is a simplification of CityGML and IFC standards which are widely used for 3D city modelling and building works. PIM considers buildings and infrastructure equally as “built facilities”, which contains buildings, roads, vegetation, terrain etc.
PIM is a whole process that can also be supported by spatial relational database, in order to make it as a central platform for a wide range of internal and external practitioners for planning, designing, delivering and operational management work in the built environment project. It goes further since PIM can become an important resource for the community/city/precinct who use and interact with the built environment, lending critical support for the smart cities and communities that are emerging in response to the challenges of rapid urban development in Australia.
Progressing precinct modelling on the UNSW campus and beyond: BIM/PIM and 3DGIS 3D PIM Modelling and Data Import (2156092 PDF)
RP2011u1: Progressing precinct modelling on the UNSW campus and beyond: BIM/PIM and 3DGIS System Architecture and Visualisation
This report presents a way of structuring and visualising geospatial data and their corresponding semantics and metadata in a Precinct Information Model (PIM). The datasets obtained from UNSW Estate Management (EM) are used in this development.
The study is completed through several steps involving pre-processing and storage of data, along with web-based visualisation.
Progressing precinct modelling on the UNSW campus and beyond: BIM/PIM and 3DGIS System Architecture and Visualisation (4728598 PDF)
Partners on this project
- UNSW Sydney
- Swinburne University of Technology
- Standards Australia