GeoBIM information to check digital building permit regulations

Abstract

Municipalities invest a lot of time and person-hours into manual building permit checks. With the increase in computational power and the use of Building Information Models (BIM) in the building design life cycle, several municipalities are investing in automating these checks using BIM and geo-data sets. However, few examples exist of tools effectively using geo-information with BIM. In order to address this gap, a project was developed with the municipality of Rotterdam (NL). In a previous phase, a tool was implemented, able to analyse the BIM data to extract the needed information for a few representative regulations. In order to extend and improve the previously developed tool, a web-based interface is now implemented and geo-data sets are integrated to the process allowing more powerful GeoBIM analysis. Three checks using both BIM and GIS data were implemented and tested: (i) The parcel limit check evaluates if the building's footprint derived from BIM falls within the parcel limit provided from the municipalities' parcel data sets. (ii) The height check evaluates the maximum building's relative height to the road's height. Finally, (iii) the road overhang check detects neighbouring roads to the parcel and evaluates the admissible overhang over that road. This paper presents these developments, including the type of input data that is needed for the checks, the tools for the three new GeoBIM checks (parcel limit check, height check, road overhang check) and the implementation in the web-based tool.