FYPs/Thesis/Journal from Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong

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Institution Title Type Date Author(s) Abstract Link
HKUST A state-of-the-art review on the integration of building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) Journal 02/2017 Liu, X., Wang, X., Wright, G., Cheng, J.C.P., Li, X., and Liu, R. The integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS) has been identified as a promising but challenging topic to transform information towards the generation of knowledge and intelligence. Achievement of integrating these two concepts and enabling technologies will have a significant impact on solving problems in the civil, building and infrastructure sectors. However, since GIS and BIM were originally developed for different purposes, numerous challenges are being encountered for the integration. To better understand these two different domains, this paper reviews the development and dissimilarities of GIS and BIM, the existing integration methods, and investigates their potential in various applications. This study shows that the integration methods are developed for various reasons and aim to solve different problems. The parameters influencing the choice can be summarized and named as “EEEF” criteria: effectiveness, extensibility, effort, and flexibility. Compared with other methods, semantic web technologies provide a promising and generalized integration solution. However, the biggest challenges of this method are the large efforts required at early stage and the isolated development of ontologies within one particular domain. The isolation problem also applies to other methods. Therefore, openness is the key of the success of BIM and GIS integration. Link
HKUST Automated dimensional quality assurance of full-scale precast concrete elements using laser scanning and BIM Journal 09/2016 Kim, M.-K., Wang, Q., Park, J.-W., Cheng, J.C.P., Chang, C.-C., and Sohn, H. This study presents a quality inspection technique for full-scale precast concrete elements using laser scanning and building information modeling (BIM). In today's construction industry, there is an increasing demand for modularization of prefabricated components and control of their dimensional quality during the fabrication and assembly stages. To meet these needs, this study develops a non-contact dimensional quality assurance (DQA) technique that automatically and precisely assesses the key quality criteria of full-scale precast concrete elements. First, a new coordinate transformation algorithm is developed taking into account the scales and complexities of real precast slabs so that the DQA technique can be fully automated. Second, a geometry matching method based on the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), which relates the as-built model constructed from the point cloud data to the corresponding as-designed BIM model, is utilized for precise dimension estimations of the actual precast slab. Third, an edge and corner extraction algorithm is advanced to tackle issues encountered in unexpected conditions, i.e. large incident angles and external steel bars being located near the edge of precast concrete elements. Lastly, a BIM-assisted storage and delivery approach for the obtained DQA data is proposed so that all relevant project stakeholders can share and update DQA data through the manufacture and assembly stages of the project. The applicability of the proposed DQA technique is validated through field tests on two full-scale precast slabs, and the associated implementation issues are discussed. Field test results reveal that the proposed DQA technique can achieve a measurement accuracy of around 3.0 mm for dimension and position estimations. Link
HKUST Automated quality assessment of precast concrete elements with geometry irregularities using terrestrial laser scanning Journal 04/2016 Wang, Q., Kim, M.-K., Cheng, J.C.P., and Sohn, H. Precast concrete elements are popularly used and it is important to ensure that the dimensions of individual elements conforms to design codes. However, the current quality assessment of precast concrete elements is inaccurate and time-consuming. To address the problems, this study presents an automated quality assessment technique which estimates the dimensions of precast concrete elements with geometry irregularities using terrestrial laser scanners (TLS). While the scan data obtained from TLS represent the as-built condition of an element, a Building Information Modeling (BIM) model stores the as-design condition of the element. Taking the BIM model as a reference, the scan data are processed to estimate the as-built dimensions of the element. Experiments on a specimen demonstrated that the proposed technique can estimate the dimensions of elements effectively and accurately. Furthermore, a mirror-aided scanning approach, which aims to achieve reduced incident angles in real scanning environments, is proposed and validated by experiments. Link
HKUST Mapping between BIM and 3D GIS in different levels of detail using schema mediation and instance comparison Journal 04/2016 Deng, Y., Cheng, J.C.P., and Anumba, C.J. The Building Information Modeling (BIM) domain and the Geographic Information System (GIS) domain share a mutual need for information from each other. Information from GIS can facilitate BIM applications such as site selection and onsite material layout, while BIM models could help generate detailed models in GIS and achieve better utility management. The mapping between the key schemas in the BIM domain and the GIS domain is the most critical step towards interoperability between the two domains. In this study, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) were chosen as the key schemas due to their wide applications in the BIM domain and the GIS domain, respectively. We used an instance-based method to generate the mapping rules between IFC and CityGML based on the inspection of entities representing the same component in the same model. It ensures accurate mapping between the two schemas. The transformation of coordinate systems and geometry are two major issues addressed in the instance-based method. Considering the difference in schema structure and information richness between the two schemas, a reference ontology called Semantic City Model was developed and an instance-based method was adopted. The Semantic City Model captures all the relevant information from BIM models and GIS models during the mapping process. Since CityGML is defined in five levels of detail (LoD), the harmonization among LoDs in CityGML was also developed in order to complete the mapping. The test results show that the developed framework can achieve automatic data mapping between IFC and CityGML in different LoDs. Furthermore, the developed Semantic City Model is extensible and can be the basis for other schema mappings between the BIM domain and the GIS domain. Link
HKUST Analytical review and evaluation of civil information modelling (CIM) Journal 04/2016 Cheng, J.C.P., Lu, Q., and Deng, Y. Building information modeling (BIM) has been widely adopted in the building industry. However, the use of BIM in civil infrastructure facilities, sometimes referred to as civil information modeling (CIM) has been slow in its application. Industry and academia are increasingly putting effort into CIM study and implementation, but so far there has been no comprehensive review of their effort in this regard. This paper presents a framework to evaluate the current practices of CIM adoption for various civil infrastructure facilities. In this study, civil infrastructure facilities were divided into nine categories for evaluation and the effort with regard to CIM adoption for each civil infrastructure category was evaluated in six aspects. Based on the evaluation and comparison results of 171 case studies and 62 academic papers on CIM, research gaps were identified and recommendations were made. For example, the findings show that data schema development for civil infrastructure facilities other than bridges, roads, and tunnels are lacking. The results and research gaps revealed by this study are useful for both researchers and practitioners. Link
HKUST Quantification of construction and demolition waste prevented by BIM-based design validation: Case studies in South Korea Journal 01/2016 Won, J., Cheng, J.C.P., and Lee, G. Waste generated in construction and demolition processes comprised around 50% of the solid waste in South Korea in 2013. Many cases show that design validation based on building information modeling (BIM) is an effective means to reduce the amount of construction waste since construction waste is mainly generated due to improper design and unexpected changes in the design and construction phases. However, the amount of construction waste that could be avoided by adopting BIM-based design validation has been unknown. This paper aims to estimate the amount of construction waste prevented by a BIM-based design validation process based on the amount of construction waste that might be generated due to design errors. Two project cases in South Korea were studied in this paper, with 381 and 136 design errors detected, respectively during the BIM-based design validation. Each design error was categorized according to its cause and the likelihood of detection before construction. The case studies show that BIM-based design validation could prevent 4.3–15.2% of construction waste that might have been generated without using BIM. Link