What is Industrial Foundation Classes (IFC)

The interoperability of Information Systems has been a research topic for over thirty years. While some forms of heterogeneity have been settled by the adoption of standards, some domains, such as the Urban Information Modeling (UIM), require specific research. The UIM combines information from the domain of Building Information Modeling (BIM) with Geographic Information System (GIS) within a collaborative platform. Using this platform, a set of heterogeneous actors takes part in the lifecycle of the urban environment through a 3D digital model. This ambition is faced with several gaps such as resolution of semantic heterogeneity in the lifecycle management system, the resolution of structural heterogeneity between 2D geo-referenced modeling and 3D geometric modeling, or problem solving scalability for real-time 3D display from a remote server for managing a real environment of several million square meters. In this chapter, the authors present the SIGA3D European Project trying to overcome these obstacles into a Web collaborative platform combining BIM and GIS data and processes for Urban Facility Management.