Integrated GeoBIM Requirements Definition for Digital Building Permit

The development of methods for building permit issuing supported by digital tools could improve the current mostly manual procedures for processing regulatory information and related compliance processes. Several studies are currently addressing the challenge of building permit digitalisation, mostly considering building information models as the source data for automating the regulations checks. However, many of the main checks, that usually represent the major bottlenecks of the compliance checking process, need a joint representation of the new proposed construction and its context, which could be effectively represented in a (3D) geographical information system. This study aims at supporting the automation of building permitting by addressing the rule interpretation as an input to model preparation and code checking. In particular, the regulations interpretation in this case is functional to the definition of data requirements and checking rules referring to a joint GIS and BIM (GeoBIM) framework. The approach is developed and tested in the case of an Italian municipality of 45.000 inhabitants. This paper describes the interpretation of distance-related regulations by adopting a semantic mark-up and sentence-centric approach. The resulting level of information need has been represented in conceptual models (object, attributes, relationships) as an essential input to city and building model preparation. While the case study is specific in location and regulations, the type of issues encountered are a generally applicable example for the building permit use case. Future works will extend the methodology to additional three European municipalities between 45.000 and 1.000.000 inhabitants, in three European countries, to address the need for a flexible and scalable approach.