BIM/IFC as input for registering apartment rights in a 3D Land Administration Systems – A prototype webservice

The need for 3D Land Administration Systems (LAS) is growing. In this respect, research is carried out in the field of 3D LAS with respect to data sources, registration of 3D Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities and dissemination services. Within this context, BIM/IFC models are considered promising sources for 3D LAS, even though the reuse of such models from practice has not yet been examined adequately. Evaluating BIM/IFC-models from practice is crucial, since they are created for different purposes, fulfilling various design criteria. This paper investigates the technical challenges encountered when using real-world BIM/IFC-models for apartment rights’ registration in a 3D LAS. It addresses the validation of five Dutch real-world BIM/IFC-models against four technical criteria, namely: existence of IfcSpace; geometric validity; no overlap and georeferencing. The results of the validation show that the collected BIM/IFC-models lack georeference, IfcSpace and a reference to attributes related to the respective legal units in the Dutch 3D LAS. After validation the models are stored in a 3D LAS Database management system (DBMS), in which the legal spaces are enriched with information of the Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities (RRR’s) in line with the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM - ISO 19152:2012). The contents of the 3D LAS DBMS are visualised in a web viewer. Additionally, the design for a webservice is introduced, aiming to automate the process of validation, conversion and visualisation. The paper concludes with recommendations and guidelines for creators of BIM/IFC-models based on the outcome of the validation, as well as challenges and recommendations for implementing a validation webservice.