BIM/IFC files for 3D real property registration

Abstract

Land Administration is a quite inter-disciplinary field involving experts and knowledge regarding legal aspects, institutional support to establish relationships between involved parties and technical support to realize it. Today, land administrators and development organizations are challenged by an unprecedented demand to utilise space above and below earth’s surface, which mandates the use of 3D information. At the same time, the current societal demand for sustainability, is driving the need to integrate independent systems with standalone databases with different aspects of buildings in their lifecycle phases.
In parallel, the evolution and applications of Building Information Modelling (BIM) towards integrated sustainable design and dissemination of information is gaining ground at international level. The requirements for more circular design thinking and digitalisation through technologies such as BIM can pave the ways for incremental step changes to achieve collaboration within building’s lifecycle and strategic design for decision-making.
The impact of BIM on land administration domain is recognized, and it is being seen from governmental perspective as a digital reform and transition that will bring together technology, process improvements and digital information, to radically improve project outcomes and asset operations. One of the strong characteristics of BIM is that it is considered as a strategic enabler for improving decision-making and delivery for both buildings and public infrastructure assets across their whole lifecycle.
In this scene, taking into consideration the continuing increase of BIM/ IFC files, recent research focuses on the potential role of BIM in the context of circular economy and circular design, and the reuse of BIM/ IFC files in buildings’ lifecycle. This paper presents an initial analysis on a BIM-based approach to support the registration of 3D property information. The research introduces the concepts and significance of circularity thinking and lifecycle approach at an era where there is mass amount of information, that needs to be handled efficiently. To this end, an extensive literature review on standardization approaches regarding BIM at international and national level is presented, followed by a state-of-art in the field of BIM exploitation as input for land administration purposes.