Integrating Internet of Things (IoT), Advanced Analytics and Immersive Computing to Enable Cognitive BIM

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Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the improvement of Facility Life-Cycle Management (FLCM) activities by integrating Building information modeling (BIM) with emerging digital technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR). While these new synergies show great potential, major research gaps still limit the joint benefits of such technologies. One of the primary challenges is the lack of sufficient semantic interoperability between the data ecosystems of these technological disciplines. This shortcoming mainly stems from strong ties to closed data ecosystems, which impede effective cross-domain data exchange throughout the lifecycle of facilities. Recent research using formal ontologies and semantic web technologies to address interoperability for the built environment has shown promising results. However, the application of such approaches has yet to be more extensively investigated for BIM-IoT integration. Mere unification of FLCM data does not add much value. The diverse collected data should first be fused and then transformed into useful information/knowledge. Additionally, various inferences are required to retrieve relevant information/knowledge as input to Decision Support Systems (DSS) designed to assist target practitioners. Yet, since human intervention will remain as a key element, integrating data analytics with serious games promises further opportunities by enhancing the visualizations and interactions provided by such environments. To deliver rich orchestrations of BIM, IoT, and serious game environments, this proposal investigates "Cognitive BIM": a framework for creating BIM-centred and self-evolving digital twins of facilities capable of sensing, learning, and interacting. To meet this long-term vision, four short-term objectives have been established with the involvement of 7 students: two Ph.D., four M.Sc., and one undergraduate student. First, the application of ontologies and semantic web technologies will be investigated to integrate BIM, IoT, and recorded lifecycle data. Next, a data analytics framework will be presented to apply various advanced data-mining methods. Then, an ontology-based framework will be developed to retrieve contextually relevant information/knowledge and feed domain-specific DSS. Finally, the framework will be expanded to develop VR/AR-enabled interfaces and convey rich visualizations of timely insights to various stakeholders (e.g., designers, constructors, facility managers), thereby assisting them in heuristics-based problem-solving and incorporating their intuitive feedback. Results of the proposed research will contribute to the sustainable development of the built environment by paving the road for the actualization of smart cities in which individual digital twins of different facilities, such as buildings, bridges, and tunnels, can share insights in real-time and act intelligently and collectively.