SYSTEM ARCHITECTURES FOR AEC INTEROPERABILITY

"This paper discusses several issues relating to computational system architectures to support interoperability among distributed, model-based AEC/FM applications. The approach is based on tiered layers where applications interact with local “Building Objects” software components that, in turn, interact with a variety of distributed data repository alternatives in a data layer. International Foundation Classes (IFCs) models are used as the primary data model in each of the layers and communication between layers uses several XML standards. One issue is an approach to multiple meta-models within the many components of a distributed system. IFCs focus on strongly-typed models that describe AEC concepts and objects in an explicit manner. One of the requirements for applications that implement IFCs is that they must understand the semantics of the IFCs and map the IFC models to the application internal application models. However, software applications used in AEC processes are not always based on an internal model that can be explicitly mapped to a strongly-typed model such as the IFCs at development stage. Instead, it is common that some of the applications are either purely generic without an explicitly defined domain schema, or generic enough so as they must deal with run-time databases whose schemas cannot be pre-defined during the development of the applications. In order to allow this type of software to share and exchange data with other applications through the models such as the IFCs, data schemas must be mapped at a higher and abstract level that allows for run-time model schema configurations and mappings. The Interactive Workspace for Project Management (IWPM) is a CIFE (Center for Facilities Engineering) project that integrates several research decision support systems, commercial project management systems, and advanced collaborative human-computer interaction approaches using emerging industry data standards and internet technologies. To illustrate an example of using the meta-model approach, the paper applies the use cases in IWPM to demonstrate how meta-models can be used to implement IFC project management related models in such an integrated software environment."