Open BIM exchange on Blockchain 3.0 virtual disk: A traceable semantic differential transaction approach
image: The framework consists of three layers from top to bottom: (1) the application layer, (2) the tSDT approach, and (3) the Blockchain 3.0 framework. The uppermost application layer, which hosts a web-based DApp named openBIMdisk, connects to the distributed BIM exchange.
Credit: Lingming KONG 1, Rui ZHAO 1, Chimay J. ANUMBA 2, Weisheng LU 1, Fan XUE 1, †
This study is led by Prof. Xue Fan (iLab, Faculty of Architecture, University of Hong Kong). The team proposed a novel blockchain-enabled Open BIM data exchange paradigm to facilitate efficient collaboration.
The research team found that traditional file-based Open BIM data exchange approach encounters challenges of redundancy, traceability, and security. Inspired by the incremental development nature of BIM and Blockchain technology, capture the incremental changes of BIM as transactions and exchange through a blockchain network can be a solution. First, a novel tSDT approach is presented. The tSDT utilizes a semantic traceability function, which systematize changed semantic identifiers to generate two mapping dictionaries, to resolve the dilemma between data redundancy and traceability. Then, the trimmed BIM semantic changes are captured through tSDT to exchanged in a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network. openBIMdisk, a web-based application with featured intuitive user-interfaces, implements tSDT and Blockchain.
The proposed tSDT approach and blockchain-enabled data exchange paradigm was applied to a real modular integrated construction project. Experimental results indicated that tSDT achieved minimal BIM redundancy for storing and restoring all BIM changes, using sheer 0.007% of disk space on average. openBIMdisk facilitated BIM version management and object-level semantic traceability with a response time of 5.3 ms.
See the article: Open BIM exchange on Blockchain 3.0 virtual disk: A traceable semantic differential transaction approach https://doi.org/10.1007/s42524-024-4006-x