Improving applicability for information model of an IFC-based steel bridge in the design phase using functional meanings of bridge components

The industry foundation classes (IFC) data model is the most important data schema in ensuring the interoperability of the information generated throughout the lifecycle of facilities. However, because the current IFC model is focused on buildings, there are limitations when this model is applied to bridge structures. This paper proposes a method that enables the information modeling of steel box girder bridges based on the current IFC. To select the required and core items, we classify the components of a steel box girder bridge by the design stage with reference to engineering documents. To generate functional meanings of each bridge component, we develop the rules of the unique identifier and information reassignment, and then apply a semi-automated naming algorithm. The generated bridge information model was used to confirm the functional semantic meanings of individual components, and it was checked whether additional external information, such as carbon emissions, could be linked for specific bridge components. It was observed that information retrieval and extraction for components is possible through a semantic-based query to the generated IFC-based bridge information model.