City Intelligence Information Modeling

The widespread availability of data enables the knowledge of urban phenomena: this knowledge relies on the development of a built environment information system. District Information Modelling at urban and building scale is a starting point that allows the creation of relationships between existing data, aimed to describe the performances of structures and infrastructure in a given territory: this information base will progressively connect with additional streams of data related to the use of urban facilities, linking environments and users in order to increase adaptability of services to human needs. This progression of knowledge on urban environments requires, on the one hand, an effort to relate existing data (created for sectorial scopes, with no concerns about possible interaction with other information) and, on the other hand, the need for a technological support in the management of new data fluxes coming from sensors and mobile devices, dynamic data concerning behaviours. Politecnico di Milano and University of Brescia are working on projects related to the use of information for the built environment management at urban (GIS) and building (BIM) scale for energy efficiency purposes. In the former case, the interconnection of existing databases on buildings allows to define renovation strategies on cities and districts, becoming an opportunity for the creation of an Information Model that enables the monitoring of the efficacy of policies undertaken, as well as the connection with new static and dynamic data sources. In the latter case, a Building Information Model, based on project documentation integrated with a laser scanner survey and enriched with specific Building Energy Modelling attributes, supports the decision-making process in operational and maintenance phases. The Model, connected with sensors monitoring the real building, allows the real-time connection with data concerning internal conditions and the storage of continuous data streams on the operational phase.