Knowledge-based OpenBIM data exchange for building design

Building design is highly complex as it involves numerous professionals and their interactions, hence with diverse tools used and multi-resources and different structured data and information required to be processed. Despite the existing efforts to develop multi-objective decision making tools to support complex design, most of the research face difficulties to provide holistic, dynamic and collaborative knowledge base due to the complexity of the information interoperability issues across different parties and throughout life cycle. This paper developed an automatic data exchange framework that combines only the necessary data from BIM models using semantic web technology to eliminate inefficiencies in data exchange and improve decision-making early in the design stage. The proposed data acquisition method can produce a dynamic knowledge base to connect both static and dynamic information. A multi-objective knowledge base was developed to assist engineers associated with sustainability and cost in comparing different design options based on the existing BIM data. The proposed ontology was developed using a machine-readable format, allowing the ability to add more concepts to it in the future and work with other automated tools. The validated framework could reduce human involvement and errors while providing more efficient ways to leverage diverse information sources together to support holistic decision-making for building design.