Georeferencing within IFC: A Novel Approach for Infrastructure Objects

The transfer of design data into nature is a necessary task during the construction process. For this, the geodetic Coordinate Reference System (gCRS) used during the design process needs to be accounted for and the distortions included need to be handled appropriately. In the context of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the vendor-neutral data format Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), the gCRS represents an important metadata item of the model which is included and maintained throughout the project’s lifetime. Although the IFC4 supports gCRSs by providing the option to refer to an identifier of the European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) database, it is not able to handle custom gCRSs, which can be defined for large infrastructure projects, such as the Brenner Base Tunnel (BBT). We highlight these deficiencies of the schema and propose a novel approach by expanding the IFC schema with the Well-Known Text (WKT) notation.