After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds. The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. Progress in geospatial, civil, and BIM interoperability promises efficient workflows for infrastructure.
Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. While the UK government has said that ".we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to constructionīuilding information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years.There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again.
Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure.
OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO.