Mohamed El-Mekawy

A Unified Building Model for 3D Urban GIS

Several tasks in urban and architectural design are today undertaken in a geospatial context. Building Information Models (BIM) and geospatial technologies offer 3D data models that provide information about buildings and the surrounding environment. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and CityGML are today the two most prominent semantic models for representation of BIM and geospatial models respectively. CityGML has emerged as a standard for modeling city models while IFC has been developed as a reference model for building objects and sites. Current CAD and geospatial software provide tools that allow the conversion of information from one format to the other. These tools are however fairly limited in their capabilities, often resulting in data and information losses in the transformations. This paper describes a new approach for data integration based on a unified building model (UBM) which encapsulates both the CityGML and IFC models, thus avoiding translations between the models and loss of information. To build the UBM, all classes and related concepts were initially collected from both models, overlapping concepts were merged, new objects were created to ensure the capturing of both indoor and outdoor objects, and finally, spatial relationships between the objects were redefined. Unified Modeling Language (UML) notations were used for representing its objects and relationships between them. There are two use-case scenarios, both set in a hospital: “evacuation” and “allocating spaces for patient wards” were developed to validate and test the proposed UBM data model. Based on these two scenarios, four validation queries were defined in order to validate the appropriateness of the proposed unified building model. It has been validated, through the case scenarios and four queries, that the UBM being developed is able to integrate CityGML data as well as IFC data in an apparently seamless way. Constraints and enrichment functions are used for populating empty database tables and fields. The motivation scenarios also show the needs and benefits of having an integrated approach to the modeling of indoor and outdoor spatial features.

Towards Interoperating CityGML and IFC Building Models: A Unified Model Based Approach

CityGML represents 3D urban objects that can be shared over different applications, whereas, IFC provides a very detailed semantic model for 3D building representations using constructive elements ...

An Evaluation of IFC-CityGML Unidirectional Conversion

Interoperability between building information models (BIM) and geographic information models has a strong potential to bring benefit to different demands in construction analysis, urban planning, homeland security and other applications. Therefore, different research and commercial efforts have been initiated to integrate the most prominent semantic models in BIM and geospatial applications. These semantic models are the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) respectively. However, these efforts mainly: a) use a unidirectional approach (mostly from IFC to CityGML) for converting data, or b) Extending CityGML by conceptual requirements for converting CityGML to IFC models. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of unidirectional conversion between IFC and CityGML. The different IFC concepts and its corresponding concepts in CityGML is studied and evaluated. The investigation goes beyond building objects, also including other concepts that are represented implicitly in building schemas such as building objects relations, hierarchies of building objects, appearance and other building characteristics. Due to the large semantic differences between IFC and CityGML standards, the schema mapping is based on a manual pragmatic approach without automatic procedures. The mappings are classified into three categories, namely ‘full matching’, ‘partial matching’ and ‘no matching’. The result of the study shows that only a few concepts are classified as ‘direct matching’, a few as well as ‘no matching’ while most of the building concepts are classified as ‘partial matching’. It is concluded that unidirectional approaches cannot translate all the needed concepts from both IFC and CityGML standards. Instead, we propose a meta-based unified building model, based on both standards, which shows a high potential for overcoming the shortages of the unidirectional conversion approaches.

Organizational Culture Impact on Business-IT Alignment: A Case Study of a Multinational Organization

Importance of BITA has increased over the past few years. However, achieving and maturing BITA still has apparent difficulties. Therefore, research efforts resulted in a number of theoretical models that can be applied as supportive tools for assessing different components of BITA. Most of these efforts have been produced either in Anglo-Saxon Countries or based on their experiences. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of organizational culture on maturity of BITA. The paper relies on the nine dimensions of Project GLOBE to understand societal as well as organizational culture. It also relies on the bottom-up comprehensive approach of Luftmans Strategic Alignment Maturity Model to understand organizations alignment components. To fulfill the purpose of this study, a comparative analysis has been carried out between two subsidiaries of a multinational organization with a federal organizational structure that operate in Egypt and Sweden. The results shows: a) a potential difference in how different components of BITA are interpreted and implemented in different organizational culture, and b) that the impact of organizational culture on BITA maturity is more complex than what is expected especially on variables that require social interactions.

An evaluation framework for comparing business-IT alignment models

A framework for supporting managers in selecting BITA models is proposed.The framework is based on 25 criteria classified in four different groups.The framework is evaluated in different academic and empirical iterations.The framework scientifically contributes to BITA theories and its practices.The framework as a collaborative learning tool in organizations and academia. Researchers and practitioners have argued on the importance of business-IT alignment (BITA) for organizations to maximize the business value of IT. As a result, a vast number of BITA models have been designed to support organizations in achieving, assessing and maintaining BITA. These models focus on different components (i.e. concepts/aspects of alignment) and emphasize different perspectives of the alignment (i.e. how alignment is perceived by practitioners). This makes it difficult for practitioners to choose an appropriate BITA model for a specific organization. In this paper, an evaluation framework to support practitioners in choosing appropriate BITA models is proposed. The framework was constructed following design science as a research approach. The design science activities were carried out in an iterative manner until reaching a final artefact. The process started with an extensive literature survey that led to designing a tentative model. Following that, different empirical iterations contributed to the framework development. The final framework consists of 25 criteria categorized into four groups. It was tested on six major BITA models, demonstrating its feasibility. Finally, the framework was evaluated by interviewing five business consultants and seven IT managers from large Swedish organizations. The evaluation shows that the framework has a complete set of criteria with a sufficient level of coherence, but its usability and efficiency is argued differently. The framework, additionally, is argued to potentially be used as a collaborative learning tool on requirement of BITA between practitioners from both business and IT domain or serve in the academic world.

An Organizational Culture Perspective in Business-IT Alignment

Business-IT alignment BITA has gained attention during the last decade. As a result, a number of theoretical models that can be applied as supportive tools for assessing different components of BITA have been developed. However, most of these efforts have been produced in different countries and they ignore the factor thats subjected to change due to cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on achieving BITA and influences its maturity. The research method and process follows the design science research and is done in three phases. First, an in-depth literature survey followed by a survey was carried out to identify and classify limitations of BITA attributes based on Luftmans strategic alignment maturity SAM model and then, hypothesize the potential impact of organizational culture element based on the Smit et al. model on BITA attributes. Second, an empirical study is carried out to test the hypotheses in order to identify the limited BITA attributes based on organizational culture context. These attributes are further classified for proposing an extended version to the SAM model. Finally, the extended-SAM model is evaluated in 6 Swedish large and medium organizations to test its practicality for comparing its assessment with the assessment of the original SAM model.

Strategic and Tactical Business-IT Alignment Barriers in Organizations Acting in Sweden

In research, many barriers to BITA are presented based on different theoretical frameworks. However, these barriers are studied either from a pure theoretical perspective or with limited empirical scope. This consequently hinders the achievement of BITA in organizations. In this article the practitioners view of barriers to BITA are investigated aiming at producing a list of barriers which practitioners can use as a ground for better achievement of BITA. The list of barriers was identified by conducting three in-depth case studies on multinational organizations acting in Sweden along with two focused group discussions of researchers, and followed by a survey on 74 large and medium sized organizations on the Swedish market. The result of this study is a list of 45 barriers to BITA from the perspectives of business and IT practitioners.

From Theory to Practice: Barriers to Business-IT Alignment in Organizations Acting in Sweden

In research, many barriers to BITA are presented based on different theoretical frameworks. However, these barriers are studied either from a pure theoretical perspective or with limited empirical scope. This consequently hinders the achievement of BITA in organizations. In this paper the practitioners view of barriers to BITA are investigated aiming at producing a list of barriers which practitioners can use as a ground for better achievement of BITA. The list of barriers was identified by conducting two in-depth case studies on multinational organizations acting in Sweden along with two focused group discussions of researchers, and followed by a survey on 74 large and medium sized organizations on the Swedish market. The result of this study is a list of 45 barriers to BITA from the perspectives of business and IT practitioners.

Integration of Legal Aspects in 3D Cadastral Systems

This article continues a research on the feasibility of BIM for 3D cadastre in unified building models, presented in. It describes problems and solutions concerning interaction between BIM and the registration and visualisation of legal 3D property information. BIM and legal 3D property are two seemingly different domains, and there is a lack of BIM-3D property research in relation to technical and registration issues. The article therefore focuses on possibilities and difficulties of addressing legal interests i.e. rights, restrictions and responsibilities in land. A Swedish case study is used to describe the use of 3D property formation and registration in Sweden, and how it might be possible to achieve a more integrated, standard based registration of legal boundaries and physical buildings. The results emphasize how BIM and 3D property domains can interact to serve the needs for effective information handling by e.g. importing 3D cadastral boundaries into BIM as basis for decision-making or to use BIM as input in the 3D cadastral formation process.

Extending BITA Maturity Model from Organizational Culture Perspective

Business-IT alignment (BITA) has gained attention during the past few years. As a result, a number of theoretical models that can be applied as supportive tools for assessing different components of BITA have been developed. However, most of these efforts have been produced either in Anglo-Saxon Countries or rooted in the experiences gained from these countries. Consequently, they ignore the factor that is subjected to change due to difference in cultural contexts. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on achieving BITA and influences its maturity. The research method and process that was followed, namely an in-depth literature survey followed by an empirical study of 51 Swedish multinational organizations.