IFC+: Towards the integration of IoT into early stages of building design

• Published in: Automation in construction 2022-04, Vol.136, p.104129, Article 104129
• Main Authors: Ruiz-Zafra, Angel, Benghazi, Kawtar, Noguera, Manuel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Building automation; Building control; Building design; Building information modelling (BIM); Building management systems; Building models; End users; Facilities management; IFC; Industry foundation classes; Information systems; Internet of Things; Metamodels; Modelling; Smart buildings; Urban environments
• ISSN: 0926-5805; 1872-7891
• DOI: 10.1016/j.autcon.2022.104129

The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into Building Information Modelling (BIM) provides significant opportunities to support useful services and functionalities for end users in buildings, enabling so-called smart spaces (e.g. smart buildings and smart homes). Current approaches perform this integration to access the deployed IoT devices once the building is constructed using Building Automation Systems (BAS), Building Information Systems (BIS) and Building Control Systems (BCS). Thus, the integration of IoT devices into the early stages of building design to describe IoT scenarios and IoT practices is still neglected, despite the benefits it can provide by being involved in the entire building lifecycle, e.g. cost estimation, stronger facility management, collaborative approach, simplification of tasks for developers/programmers through the integration with BIS, BAS and BCS, and a more holistic management of the IoT infrastructure. This paper presents a solution to integrate IoT into the design stage (modelling) of buildings in BIM processes, through two main contributions: Industry Foundation Classes Plus (IFC+), an extension to the latest version of IFC where new types of entities have been added to support the modelling of IoT scenarios; and a digital object-based approach to transform smart-built environment specifications in IFC+ into consumable software, with the aim of supporting IoT scenarios. This paper illustrates the applicability of the proposed method in the context of design processes, the metamodel (schema) of IFC+, the proposed approach, and a proof of concept with a clarifying use case. [Display omitted] •IFC+ is introduced as a standard-based extension to IFC.•IFC+ allows IoT infrastructure of smart buildings to be represented in BIM models.•IoT+BIM approaches treat both domains separately so real integration for models reliability is not achieved.•IFC+ is domain-independent and general purpose, so no custom software is required.•Illustrative examples of IFC+ application and supporting API software repository are provided.