BIM

Highlights from the FIATECH Member Meeting

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These have been a couple busy, challenging days at FIATECH, extremely dense in information and conversation. FIATECH is the consortium for the application of IT to Capital Projects. FIATECH was instrumental in the rapid progress of the National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS). FIATECH is also a national clearing house for information about applying developing technology to construction, including the use of mobile computing and RFID. I am not going to write of either of those today.

FIATECH is home to a far reaching project, now known as IDS-ADI. The IDS (Intelligent Data Sheet) defines coherent collections of data about classes of equipment. These data sheets include ontologically significant metadata to define the contents and meaning of each attribute. ADI project is an effort to complete and deploy systems based upon...

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Buildings, Emergency Response, and Situation Awareness

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This week twenty of us met at NIST to discuss situation awareness during emergencies. The centerpiece of the conversation was the NG911 system, or Next Generation 911. NG911 supports better interaction between call centers, and uses policy-based security to let other local call centers, or even centers in other regions take calls as circumstances and policy require. Private call centers, run by alarm services, can be full peers if local policy allows. Even buildings, and building systems, might act as 911 operators. The conveners asked me to lead an effort to develop a security model for these systems.

Interoperability at this level requires standardization of security, of policy management, and even of building semantics. 911 centers will...

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BIM, Services, and Emergency Response

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The Building Information Model (BIM) comprises a family of standards, including the three dimensional building model, that compose a comprehensive description of a building. It is an oft hoped desire that the BIM, perhaps working through a mythical BIM server, be accessible to improve situational awareness by emergency first responders

One barrier for this BIM/Emergency management information exchanges is that BIM does not, by and large, define real service mapping. Chemicals and supplies may stored by room number. Ventilation may be by zones established long before the room numbering. Missing people may be...

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Emergency Response and Building Intelligence

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The first responder faces a number of challenges in extracting useful information from a building. Chemicals and supplies may stored by room number. Ventilation may be by zones established long before the room numbering. Missing people may be in their office as per the directory, or in the conference room, which may not be identified in the BIM, or elsewhere.

BIM (Building Information Models) could rather easily bridge the control system, with its focus on AHU3 by placing AHU3 in the building. If, say a return air temperature sensor is associated with both AHU3 and room 204, then one can imagine standard techniques to visually map rooms, and high heat through the control system.

The biggest issue is control systems tend to present their points fo...

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