Aligning IFC and SRI domains for BIM supported SRI assessement

Although more assessment and certification schemes aimed at buildings appear on the market, professionals always face the same challenges: information scarcity and data flow interruptions. It therefore becomes crucial to rigorously assess the information workflows associated with built assets in order to help deliver the subsequent assessment services and certification schemes. The Smart Readiness Indicator is a new assessment scheme directed at harmonizing the smartness levels of buildings and intelligent installations at a European level. While the European Union defines the Smart Readiness Indicator scope and assessment methodology towards new regulations with the member states, the availability of data should strategically rely on existing sources such as the Building Information Model in order to automate and simplify the efforts of assessors. This paper explores the potential of Building Information Model data, more specifically relying on the Industry Foundation Classes schema, to support assessors with more automatic extraction of relevant information on the building and its equipment. The adopted methodology looks at the semantic alignment between the two domains. An initial alignment of concepts from several versions of the Industry Foundation Classes is proposed. This alignment was implemented using several rules, which were tested on the architectural and mechanical models of the same building. The study shows the convenience of employing such a methodology, the usefulness of data from existing building models, but also their limitations in correctly identifying relevant concepts.