Day 15 (Part 02) - NIRAS and the Semantic Web / BIM Level 3
Allerød, Denmark
Mads Holten Rasmussen | Engineer + Industrial PhD Candidate
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On my last day in Adelaide before taking off for this travelling fellowship I read a piece of text plastered to a wall at local collective Ensemble. I didn’t quite realise how much of a resonance it buried within me, however the visit and discussion at NIRAS - international engineering giant - today brought those words back to mind in a practical and ambitious way forward for built futures.
But before I jump into the resolve of today’s second chat I want to bring light to the core of those words serendipitously presented to me pre-international take-off. It spoke to the cause of not coveting ones ideas, highlighting the influential power of collaboration and sharing of ideas as an empowering mechanism for continued human development; both of the self and the greater community.
Although there are always confidentiality and intellectual property arrangements that prevent full transparency of developments and ideas, it would be interesting to investigate the learnings from outside of those confined-lines within the AEC industry. Perhaps bursting the practice bubbles, to lead to the bursting of the architectural bubble, to the bursting of the discipline bubbles, would allow for all of us to engage more broadly with other communities as well as each other. Working together to foster better change rather than operating in isolation.
The topic of conversation explored at my second meeting of the day with Mads Holten Rasumussen of NIRAS illuminated methods to trigger this collectiveness. In January of 2019 he submitted his Industrial PhD at DTU into ”Digital Infrastructure and Building Information Modelling in the Design and Planning of Building Services”.
I proposed a question to Mads regarding cross-disciplinary engagement and experimentation. As large subsets of disciplines can become quite focused in their expertise, I was interested to understand if teams meld their knowledge bases together to innovate; much as how the fusion of hospitality and residential typologies of architecture and interior design can contribute to a revitalised shaping of workplace environments. In short, the array of engineering disciplines at NIRAS remain quite separated. However this approach to work still operates in a collaborative manner, an opportunity enabled by future thinking of open-source sharing of knowledge through Linked Data and the Semantic Web. And this database is already being populated by open-source communities.
This is where things are going to get hella technical, but please stay with me because it’s a radical proposal of how we can all pool our established knowledge bases together to focus on new areas of work instead of revisiting or iterating on work that has already been accomplished by others. Rather than breaking down the fundamentals of the Semantic Web myself, I’m going to leave it to the better informed and creators of the YouTube video below:
The capability for the AEC industry is huge. As one example, imagine the array of Australia Standards versus other industry codes like that of the OTR (Office of the Technical Regulator). Within each of these there are similarities and clashes in terms of the regulated outcome required. A knowledge graph could optimise this process for the architect, no longer requiring the reading and deciphering of code clause after clause. The graph would have the capability to be called upon for specific parts of the codes, how they conform or contradict, and then inform of the required path/design decision for compliance.
I’d love for that capability and ease of interpretation of standards, and it’s exciting to think how that process can extend to building better, flexible building information models and digital twins. As all the essential data required for collaboration, design, construction, and realtime analysis of completed built environments are embedded dynamically within BIM 3.0 projects, just imagine the possibilities it could unlock for greater-informed and sustainable initiatives and intelligible designed outcomes.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the developments of Mads’ work and the Linked Building Data Community group, as well as furthering my understanding and application of these concepts into active projects in practice.
