Towards the Interoperability of BIM and GIS by Building Ontologies using Semantic Web Technology

Domains of BIM and GIS have been investigated to establish interoperability for a vital geospatial information exchange. Semantic Web Technology has emerged as promising answer, with ability to integrate further technologies like IoT. However, prior to integrating information sources fabricated as mesh of data, presenting data in the semantic web context (as vocabularies ontologies) is challenging, time-consuming and error-prone procedure. This study proposes a comprehensive three-module conceptual framework to establish interoperability between BIM, GIS and IoT, and focuses specifically on its first-module for a formal and automatic ontology generation process. Our methodology provides improvements and enhancements to extended Janus and PIXCO frameworks that transforms XSD into ontology model. Research is validated by a prototype implementation named EPIXCO that defines matrix for results evaluation and provides comparative analysis with standard ontologies. Generated ontology models can be sourced to establish cross-domain ontologies as integrated geospatial information with future applications leading to knowledge-graph and smart city applications.