Graph theory based representation of building information models for access control applications

Building information models are increasingly being utilised for facility management of large facilities such as critical infrastructures. In such environments, it is valuable to utilise the vast amount of data contained within the building information models to improve access control administration. The use of building information models in access control scenarios can provide 3D visualisation of buildings as well as many other advantages such as automation of essential tasks including path finding, consistency detection, and accessibility verification. However, there is no mathematical model for building information models that can be used to describe and compute these functions. In this paper, we show how graph theory can be utilised as a representation language of building information models and the proposed security related functions. This graph-theoretic representation allows for mathematically representing building information models and performing computations using these functions.