A Blockchain-based and Privacy-Protected Method for Sharing of BIM Big Data

Currently, cloud computing and big data are largely applied in smart construction, or so-called industrial Internet of Things 4.0. Building Information Model (BIM) performs as an elemental information and data unit, which is extensively employed in entire construction processes (lifespan) and inter-acted with various entities including investors, employers, design institutes, construction companies, and monitors. They thus can achieve quantitative computing, measurement, and managements by sharing BIM data. The accumulation of BIM data will finally approach to a big data for construction intelligence. However, sharing BIM big data may be subtle in terms of privacy leakage, since BIM data may enclose the critical infrastructure information, homeland security data, structure parameters, and design intellectual property. It thus is of urgent importance to protect privacy in the BIM data sharing. In this paper, we propose a blockchain based method to protect data privacy in BIM data sharing, which can be applied for guaranteeing the information security in next generation industrial Internet of Things for smart construction.