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Welcome to the Geotech IE wiki!

BIM, GIS & Digital Twins introduce or emphasize several requirements regarding the data. This mostly concern the built environment but also orientate the way the geoscience data are expected to be delivered.

Semantic coherence for Geotechnics and the necessity of models federation

The main concern is about semantics. As also identified as the main criteria of interoperability in the FAIR principles, data shall be described in a non-ambiguous way. Those definitions shall be shared by the community independently from the standard that is used. For that purpose, a federation of model is needed. Then OGC and bSI will derive logical models for OGC based and bSI based (IFC) standards.

This effort would fit into the ongoing collaboration between OGC initiatives and bSI projects on georeferencing, infrastructures alignments, procedural geometries, voxels, etc...

Richard Petrie (bSI), Scott Simmons (OGC)

Although, this project is the opportunity to align with other standards. A non-exhaustive list of them include AGS/AGSi, DIGGS, Geo3DML, GeoValML, BoreholeML, ResqML...

On the OGC side, this project is identified as the main contributor to leverage the OGC based standards. For the moment, the IFC schema extension for Geotechnics is mainly supported by the GeoSubgroup of the IFC Tunnel but it aims to serve all the IFC infrastructure projects.

Geotech IE deliverables

• Conceptual model (Work in Progress): https://github.com/opengeospatial/Geotech/wiki/1-Conceptual-model
• Guidance for the use of OGC APIs (TBD)
• Guidance for the display of geotech information in software (TBD)

Participating standard communities

Open Geospatial Consortium

OGC is an international industry consortium participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface standards. The geoscience standards, especially GeoSciML have been designed jointly with CGI-IUGS, giving them the status of reference standards for geology. Efforts from OGC have also been made to extend those standards to address the topic of hydrogeology. The result was the standard GroundwaterML2 that is an extension of GeoSciML. The geoscience standards also rely on the ISO19156 standard that is a cross domain model for Observations, Measurements and Sampling.

Contributors from OGC include:

• Scott Simmons, OGC Chief Standards Officer
• Mickael Beaufils, GeoScienceDWG Chairman, GeotechIE Leader

buildingSmart International

bSI is an international organization committed to creating and developing open digital ways of working for the built asset industry. buildingSMART standards help asset owners and the entire supply chain work more efficiently and collaboratively through the entire project and asset lifecycle.The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), ISO 16739, are the official standards for OpenBIM. Major evolutions have been made on them, especially with IFC v4.x, to extend their capacities: IFC 4.0 introduces the extension of IFC from building to infrastructure. IFC 4.3 is having another step forward in the direction of environmental modeling. It introduces the capacity of describing non-man-made objects and also georeferencing. Two major and necessary improvements to envisage the description of geotechnical objects or even earthworks. The IFC Common Schema is identified to offer a cross-infrastructure support to address those domains. Major evolutions in that direction are made through the IFC Tunnel project.

Contributors from bSI include:

• Jonas Weil, IFC Tunnel Geo-Subgroup Leader
• Rie Wada

AGS

AGS is the association of geotechnical and geoenvironmental Specialists based in UK. In 1991, the AGS set up a method for transferring data between industry organizations. This is known to many simply as ‘AGS Format’ or ‘AGS Data Format’ and provides a standard way to transfer ground investigation, laboratory testing and monitoring data between the contributing parties of a project which involves geotechnical or geoenvironmental elements. AGSi is an extension of AGS for the exchange of ground model and interpreted data in the ground domain.

Contributors from AGS include:

• Neil Chadwick, AGS Data Management Working group
• Tony Daly

DIGGS

Data Interchange for Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Specialists. DIGGS is used in the United States. It has been based on the AGS data format, yet using IT technologies like XML and GML. DIGGS supports any language, and any unit system and it can reference any codes, units, or language conventions. It is currently being expanded to handle other types of geotechnical data from sources such as pile load testing, performance monitoring instrumentation, and geo-environmental site monitoring.

Contributors from DIGGS include:

• Dan Ponti, DIGGS Steering Comitee
• Derrick Dasenbrock

Supporting community

ISSMGE TC222

The International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) is the pre-eminent professional body representing the interests and activities of Engineers, Academics and Contractors all over the world that actively participate in geotechnical engineering. The aim of the International Society is the promotion of international co-operation amongst engineers and scientists for the advancement and dissemination of knowledge in the field of Geotechnics, and its engineering and environmental applications.

Contributors from ISSMGE TC222 include:

• Magnus Romoen, ISSMGE TC222 Chairman
• Mats Kalstrom

ITA WG22

The International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA) aims are to encourage the use of the subsurface for the benefit of public, environment and sustainable development and to promote advances in planning, design, construction, maintenance and safety of tunnels and underground space, by bringing together information thereon and by studying questions related thereto.

WG22 is the Working Group dedicated to information modeling in tunelling.

Contributors from ITA WG22 include:

• Florent Robert, ITA WG22 Animator

CGI-IUGS

The Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI) is a working subcommittee of the International Union of Geological Sciences. Its mission is to enable the global exchange of knowledge about geoscience information and systems. CGI is the governing body responsible for the XML-based exchange languages Geoscience Markup Language (GeoSciML - in collaboration with the Open Geospatial Consortium) and EarthResource Markup Language (EarthResourceML). The CGI and its members also play a significant role in the OneGeology initiative.

Contributors from ITA WG22 include:

• Harvey Thorleifson, CGI-IUGS Chairman
• Edd Lewis

MINnD

The MINnD National Project in France is since its creation in 2014 is the French initiative to push openBIM extensions for infrastructure description. Majors contributions from MINnD have been brought to the development of IFC Bridge, IFC Road, IFC Rail. IFC Tunnel is largely influenced by the work made by the MINnD Tunnel (WG1-4) and MINnD Geotechnics (WG1-5) projects, that are themselves part of the wider MINnD Underground Infrastructure. MINnD Geotechnics emphasized the importance of building on and connecting existing standards.

Contributors from MINnD include:

• Isabelle Halfon
• Sylvie Bretelle
• Elodie Vautherin
• Pierre Garnier
• Alexis Serieys