A Data Model for Integrating GIS and BIM for Assessment and 3D Visualisation of Flood Damage to Building

Flood Damage Assessment (FDA) is a key component in modern risk management frameworks providing an effective basis for decision making and the treatment of the risks. Current FDA methods do not consider the distinctiveness of buildings in analysis and therefore, cannot analyse them on a case-by-case basis, which is necessary for a variety of applications like engineering and design evaluation. This is mainly due to the limited input data used in these methods. The information required for such micro-level FDA analysis includes on one hand, complete building information (well-represented in BIM) and on the other hand, flood information that is commonly managed by GIS. While the independent use of BIM and GIS cannot satisfy all the information requirements for detailed FDA, their integration can potentially be used for this purpose. However, existing integration methods are application-specific and their adoption for FDA is challenging. This paper presents a method for BIM-GIS integration to support the requirements of a detailed assessment and 3D visualisation of flood damage to buildings. The data modelling cycle was used to design a new data model as a profile of GML for this purpose. The model was evaluated using a case study and found effective to satisfy the required criteria for micro-level FDA.