Sharing Linked Building Data in a Peer-to-Peer Network: ifcOWL Meets InterPlanetary File System

Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, vol. 38

Abstract

The recent and significant change in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is the increasing use of building information management (BIM) tools in design and how the generated digital data are consumed. Although designers have primarily published blueprints and model files, multiple parties are now involved in producing different aspects of the data and may be consuming data produced by others. This evolution has created new challenges in sharing and synchronizing information across organizational boundaries. Linked building data is a community effort identified as a potential means of overcoming the barriers to data interoperability. In this paper, we present how the industry can be strengthened using a peer-to-peer network based on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) framework to address the typical availability problems of web-based data. The paper particularly presents how Linked Data serialization of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard can be used in the context of IPFS and benchmarks the performance for the publication of models between IPFS versus HTTP protocol. We show that linked building data—in particular, IFC models converted into Resource Description Format (RDF) graphs according to the ifcOWL ontology—can be implemented using the framework, with initial indications of significant benefits of a peer-to-peer network in terms of performance, offline access, and immutable version history. Two use cases in distributed collaborative environments in the AEC/facility management (FM) sector using evolving multidomain models are used to evaluate the work.

Authors 5

1. Jyrki Oraskari Aachen Ph.D. Candidate

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Ph.D. Candidate, Individualized Production in Architecture, RWTH Aachen, Campus-Boulevard 30, Aachen 52074, Germany (corresponding author). ORCID:

2. Seppo Törmä

   Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences

   Affiliation as printed

   CEO, VisuaLynk Ltd.; Head of Degree Program, Computing in Construction, Construction Metropolia Univ. of Applied Science, P. O. BOX 4000, Helsinki FI-00079, Finland. ORCID:

3. Mehmet Yalcinkaya
   Affiliation as printed

   Development Lead, VisuaLynk Ltd., Ångaren Indias Gata 4, Gothenburg 41761, Sweden. ORCID:

4. Vishal Singh

   Indian Institute of Science Bangalore

   Affiliation as printed

   Associate Professor, Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, CV Raman Rd., Bangalore 560012, India

5. Jakob Beetz Aachen Professor Chair of Design Computation Fakultät für Architektur

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Professor and Chair of Design Computation, Fakultät für Architektur, RWTH Aachen, Reiffmuseum, Schinkelstr 1, Aachen 52062, Germany