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Built assets, agents, and BIM models

When dealing with an existing building - generally in all activities in the operational stage of the building lifecycle, ranging from asset management, property management, and building maintenance to renovation projects - it is essential to know what are the relations of the built assets in question with the agents that own, lease, occupy, or use those assets.

Below the DiCon classes and properties to represent built assets and related agents is presented, as a class diagram and with a small example. Finally it is shown how a BIM model can be connected to the built assets.

Classes and properties

DiCon representation of built assets (dice:BuiltAsset) covers those parts of built environment that can be owned separately: real estates (dice:RealEstate), buildings (dice:Building), and building units (BuildingUnit), the last one further subdivided into residential units (dice:ResidentialUnit) and non-residential units (dice:NonResidentialUnit), see DiCon Entities. They are related to agents (dica:Agent) and legal persons (dica:LegalPerson) that can own (dica:isOwnerOf), lease (dica:hasLeaseOn), occupy (dica:isOccupantIn), or use (dica:isBuiltAssetUserOf) built assets and be in consequent relationships with each other such as tenant (dica:hasTenant) or landlord (dica:hasLandlord), see DiCon Agents.

Example

The code below shows an example of entities related to two residential units, where the ownership structure is organized as a condominium. There is a real estate (:RE1) with one building (:RE1-B1) that contains two apartments (:RE1-B1-Apt1 and :RE1-B1-Apt2). The housing coop (:RE1-Housing-Coop) owns the real estate. There are two shareholders (:Owner1 and :Owner2) who own the apartments. The first one has rented the apartment to a tenant (:Tenant1) who lives in the apartment with another occupant (:Occupant1) while the second owner lives alone in her apartment.


@prefix : <http://company1.com/> .
@prefix dice: <https://w3id.org/digitalconstruction/0.5/Entities#> .
@prefix dica: <https://w3id.org/digitalconstruction/0.5/Agents#> .

# BUILT ASSETS

:RE1 a dice:RealEstate ;
     dice:hasBuilding :Re1-B1 .

:BE1-B1 a dice:Building ;
        dice:hasBuildingUnit :RE1-B1-Apt1, :RE1-B1-Apt2 .

:RE1-B1-Apt1 a dice:ResidentialUnit .	
:RE1-B1-Apt2 a dice:ResidentialUnit  .

# AGENTS

:RE1-HousingCoop a dica:Corporation ;
                 dica:isOwnerOf :RE1 ;
		 dica:hasShareholder :Owner1, Owner2 .

:Owner1 a dica:Person , dica:BuiltAssetOwner ;
        dica:isOwnerOf :RE1-B1-Apt1 ;
	dica:hasTenant :Tenant1 .

:Tenant1 a dica:Person, dica:Tenant , dica:Occupant ;
         dica:hasLeaseOn :RE1-B1-Apt1 ;
	 dica:isOccupantIn :RE1-B1-Apt1 .

:Occupant1 a dica:Person, dica:Occupant ;
           dica:isOccupantIn :RE1-B1-Apt1 .

:Owner2 a dica:Person , dica:BuiltAssetOwner ;
        dica:isOwnerOf :RE1-B1-Apt1 ;
	dica:isOccupantIn :RE1-B1-Apt2 .

The figure below shows the relations of the first owner (:Owner1).

Connecting a BIM model to the built assets

When a BIM model of the building is created, its relevant spatial structures (those of type ifcowl:IfcBuilding, ifcowl:IfcZone, or ifcowl:IfcSpace) can be connected to the built asset through the object property dice:isLocationOf.

Once the IFC model is converted into RDF, the resulting ifcowl-based model can contain entities such as the following:


@prefix : <http://company1.com/> .
@prefix ifcowl: &lhttps://standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/DEV/IFC4/ADD2_TC1/OWL> .

:GlobalId/0484c9eb-f608-4ddc-badf-719678accf22 a ifcowl:IfcBuilding ; ...

:GlobalId/9ada6928-bcae-46fb-a808-5efbfdbed8b4 a ifcowl:IfcZone ; ...

:GlobalId/0af672c4-7cb6-4b64-b3d2-141bff8899d5 a ifcowl:IfcZone ; ...

To connect IFC entities to built assets, the corresponding entities from the IFC model and the asset model need to be identified, manually or automatically, as it may be, perhaps based on common identifying properties. After that the connextions can be with declarations such as the following:


@prefix : <http://company1.com/> .
@prefix dice: <https://w3id.org/digitalconstruction/0.5/Entities#> .

:RE1-B1 dice:isLocationOf :GlobalId/0484c9eb-f608-4ddc-badf-719678accf22 .

:RE1-B1-Apt1 dice:isLocationOf :GlobalId/9ada6928-bcae-46fb-a808-5efbfdbed8b4 .

:RE1-B1-Apt2 dice:isLocationOf :GlobalId/0af672c4-7cb6-4b64-b3d2-141bff8899d5 .

Last modified: Fri Sep 10 17:36:07 EEST 2021