This column is sponsored by ESRI

There’s such great promise for the model-based future for projects that incorporate multiple disciplines and have sustainability as their goal. When the interdisciplinary approach meets a collaborative model-based interface, where all inputs become a shared model, expertise and insight into complex systems will be greatly enhanced.

It’s the model as a hub for activity that gives this vision its promise. With a central and shared model, everyone is interested in interacting with it, to both receive information or post their own information. And the interaction means that the model will live on and be updated as the real world evolves.

Barriers to Collaboration

Without the barriers of different data formats from software tools that are involved in urban and infrastructure planning, the use of information technology for collaborative planning projects could be so much better than it is today. Non-integrated software formats don’t equate with projects that are sustainable, because the individualized tools each leave something out when the data is combined, and the model lacks the intelligence with which it was created.

Individual workflows for specific disciplines, as well as specific or customized software interfaces, are likely a necessary and ongoing thing, because each discipline has its own outlook and data set that needs to be synthesized. Having customized tools for the task needn’t be a barrier for sharing and interacting with the same model. In essence, the shared model becomes the interoperability piece as the model is able to ingest all formats.

Models Lock in Knowledge

Without locking in the knowledge of many disciplines within the model, the project itself becomes disposable. Just think of all the buildings that were designed and drawn, with their models simply discarded or never updated. The idea that a model lives alongside the existing structure or location, means that it can collect ongoing updates over time, increasing the utility of the model and aiding understanding.

Bentley recently acquired Common Point and its ConstructSim technology that plays heavily in the plant design space as a collaborative design tool. This technology is an excellent example of how the virtual model of a complex system plays heavily into daily operations and construction. The collaborative design tool has inputs from many disciplines within the plant, and the highly-detailed model become very critical from construction to ongoing maintenance.

This class of toolset is ideal for the very complex plant space, but it would also certainly have a role in larger built environments such as campuses or transportation hubs. In these very large facilities, the complexity of maintenance tasks are similar to that of a plant, just at a much larger scale.

The approach of a centralized and collaborative design model should be translatable to larger-scale endeavors and geographies. The benefits of the collaborative design approach are proven at the plant scale as a superior communication and analysis medium that saves time and money during the construction process and to increases efficiency and safety ongoing. Similar results could easily be achieved at multi-disciplinary models of larger scale.

Read what Jeff Thurston has to say on this subject here.

Read more related Spatial Sustain posts:

• What is intelligent infrastructure, and how do geospatial tools contribute?
• How can it be that we’re only scratching the surface of LIDAR’s potential?
• What can be learned from the volunteer mapping efforts for Haiti?
• How do geospatial tools model and visualize external influences?
• What are the implications of model-based design for the geospatial community?