A semi-automated method for integrating textural and material data into as-built BIM using TIS

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is increasingly used throughout the facility's life cycle for various applications, such as design, construction, facility management, and maintenance. For existing buildings, the geometry of as-built BIM is often constructed using dense, three dimensional (3D) point clouds data obtained with laser scanners. Traditionally, as-built BIM systems do not contain the material and textural information of the buildings' elements. This paper presents a semi-automatic method for generation of material and texture rich as-built BIM. The method captures and integrates material and textural information of building elements into as-built BIM using thermal infrared sensing (TIS). The proposed method uses TIS to capture thermal images of the interior walls of an existing building. These images are then processed to extract the interior walls using a segmentation algorithm. The digital numbers in the resulted images are then transformed into radiance values that represent the emitted thermal infrared radiation. Machine learning techniques are then applied to build a correlation between the radiance values and the material type in each image. The radiance values were used to extract textural information from the images. The extracted textural and material information are then robustly integrated into the as-built BIM providing the data needed for the assessment of building conditions in general including energy efficiency, among others