DEVELOPING AN INTEGRATED DATA MODEL BASED ON IFC AND SENSORML FOR POST-COVID FACILITY OPERATION

Abstract

In early 2020 when World Health Organization (WHO) declared an outbreak of COVID-19 disease, it has spread and caused a huge impact on the entire world. Singapore responded quickly by implementing Circuit Breaker (CB) measures including the closure of entertainment venues, and tourist attractions to reduce crowd density. With the reduction in the number of cases, Singapore has gradually moved toward a post-COVID world. Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has implemented regulations for the indoor air-conditioned building to reduce disease transmission and minimize human intervention. To maintain a stable and healthy indoor environment, the sensor is a key technology to collect real-time data and monitor the real-world condition. As data sharing and collaboration among parties required an open standard to address the common issues faced by Building information modeling (BIM) and Internet of Things (IoT) integration, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is adopted to support the real-time data integration.

IFC schema has progressively updated its capacities and the latest version is IFC 4 ADD 2. However, the latest version of the IFC only supports sensor types related to building management systems, but not focusing on health monitoring and this is important for the post-COVID facilities operation, and the missing attributes are yet to be proposed.

This research paper set forth to identify the required attributes in IFC sensor entity with Sensor Model Language (SensorML). An international standard has been approved by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) member which provided descriptions for sensors and sensor systems. Integration of IFC and SensorML has provided effective post-COVID facilities operation at the same time addressed the thermal comfort, human health, and energy-efficient of an air-conditioned building.

This paper proposed an extension of the IFC Sensor to enrich the IFC schema. An integrated data model has been developed to describe the IFC extension using a UML diagram that can be used for post-COVID facilities operation.