The topology of spaces, space boundaries and enclosing structures in building product data models

An issue which needs to be addressed in full-scale building product data models is the modelling of spaces and the surfaces and physical enclosure elements that surround these -spaces. This information isat the very kernel of building product data models, since almost all sub disciplines in building design, construction and maintenance need this information. Some early proposed generic models (i.e. GARM, Building Systems Model, the RATAS model) treated information on a higher level of abstraction and didn't deal with this aspect. It is also an issue that hasn't been dealt with in traditional building classification systems. This paper analyses some recent models which deal with the topology of spaces, space boundaries or surfaces and enclosing structures, and tries to suggest a possible synthesis of this work. The models included in the analysis were the RATAS model as implemented in prototype work at VTT (Finland), the House model of de Waard (Netherlands), the Synthesis model of the Groupe de Structuration des Donnees (France) and the Integrated Data Model of the EC-funded COMBINE project ( European).