An Approach based on the ifcOWL Ontology to Support Indoor Navigation

Abstract

This paper presents an indoor navigation support system based on the Building Information Models (BIM) paradigm. Although BIM is initially defined for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction/Facility Management (AEC/FM) industry, the authors believe that it can provide added value in this context. To this end, the authors will focus on the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard for the formal representation of BIM. The approach followed in this paper will be based on the ifcOWL ontology, which translates the IFC schemas into Ontology Web Language (OWL. This way of expressing the elements of a building can be used to code information that is very useful for navigation, such as the location of elements related to the actions desired by the user. It is important to note that this design is intended to be used as a complement to other well-known tools and techniques for indoor navigation. The proposed modifications have been successfully tested in a variety of simulated and real scenarios. The main limitation of the proposal is the immense amount of information contained in the ifcOWL ontology, which causes difficulties involving its processing and the time necessary to perform operations on it.