Data completion in building information management: electrical lines from range scans and photographs

Background The concept of building information management (BIM) is based on its holistic nature. This idea pays off, if all relevant information is fused into one consistent data set. As a consequence, the completeness of data is vital and the research question on how to complete data automatically remains open. Methods In this article we present a data completion technique based on knowledge management. We encode expert and domain knowledge in a generative system that represents norms and standards in a machine-readable manner. The implementation of this approach be used to automatically determine a hypothesis on the location of electrical lines within indoor range scans. Results The generative paradigm can encode domain expert knowledge in a machine-readable way. In this article we demonstrate its usage to represent norms and standards. Conclusions The benefit of our method is the further completion of digital building information models – a necessary step to take full advantage of building information modeling.