The International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction
Publications / 2011 Proceedings of the 28th ISARC, Seoul, Korea
Cobie-Based Lightweight Representation of a Building Navigation Network
A navigation network is required for analysis in several activities during various phases of a building lifecycle, such as building accessibility analysis [22], building egress code compliance ([15], [11]), wayfinding [10], indoor positioning [18] and navigation guidance [18]. Various models for representing navigation networks have been proposed in literature [1], such as graph-based, set-based and hybrid models, but there is lack of a standard representation for exchanging navigation network information. We have identified the information requirements for representing navigation networks in AEC domain, such as spatial connectivity, network distance and network geometry, to name a few. The identified requirements have been mapped to existing navigation network representations, such as graph-based, set-based and hybrid models, to create a lightweight representation of navigation networks in the Construction Operations Building Information exchange (COBie) schema [4]. Our developed lightweight representation is based on a hybrid model and involves extending the COBie schema with Node, Edge and Node-Tree tables and utilizing the existing Coordinate table in the COBie schema. We conclude this paper with a discussion on the implementation of the proposed representation of navigation networks in the COBie schema.