IFCALIGNMENT FOR RASTER-TO-VECTOR GIS RAILWAY CENTRELINE: A CASE STUDY IN THE SOUTH OF ITALY

Abstract. Built environment Asset Management (AM) is evolving and renewing itself through the development of new technologies. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is the main methodology for the digitisation process of existing data and information. Although BIM was originally intended for buildings, in the last few years Infrastructure Building Information Modelling (I-BIM) and Civil Information Modelling (CIM) are emerging to manage civil infrastructure. The interaction of infrastructure with the surrounding environment is a fundamental aspect and it requires data-sharing between different sources and systems. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is used to store and elaborate Earth’s surface information, and it is, therefore, necessary to achieve a complete BIM/GIS interoperability. This paper aims to test the popular BIM open-standard Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) capabilities and potentialities in storing GIS data. A case study of a disused railway in the south of Italy was used to test the methodology presented: rail-centreline (alignment) extraction from GIS raster data, and a conversion of the alignment to an IFCAlignment element. The possibility to export a rail alignment in IFC was confirmed.