Decision Making in the 4th Dimension—Exploring Use Cases and Technical Options for the Integration of 4D BIM and GIS during Construction

In both the Geospatial (Geo) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) domains, it is widely acknowledged that the integration of geo-data and BIM-data is beneficial and a crucial step towards solving the multi-disciplinary challenges of our built environment. The result of this integration—broadly termed GeoBIM—has the potential to be particularly beneficial in the context of the construction of large infrastructure projects, which could make use of data relating to the larger spatial extents typically handled in geographical information systems (GIS) as well as the detailed models generated by BIM. To date, GeoBIM integration has mainly been explored for buildings, in a 3D context and for small projects. This paper demonstrates the results of the next level of integration, exploring the addition of the fourth dimension by linking project schedule information to create 4D GeoBIM, examining interoperability challenges and benefits in the context of a number of use cases relating to the enabling works for a major commercial infrastructure project. The integrating power of location and time—knowing where and when data relate to—allows us to explore data interoperability challenges relating to linking real world construction data, created using commercial software, with other data sources; we are then able to demonstrate the benefits of 4D GeoBIM in the context of three decision making scenarios: examining the potential for prioritisation of noise mitigation interventions by identifying apartments closest to the noisiest construction process; development of a 4D location-enabled risk register allowing, for example, work to continue underground if a risk is specific to the top of a building; ensuring construction safety by using 3D buffering to ensure that the required distances between moving construction equipment and surrounding infrastructure are not breached. Additionally, once integrated, we are able to ‘democratize’ the data—make it accessible beyond the BIM and GIS expert group—by embedding it into a 3D/4D open source Web GIS tool.