BIM-GIS integration approach for high-fidelity wind hazard modeling at the community-level

Wind hazards often result in significant damage to the built environment cascading into impacts on the socio-economic systems within a community. The increasing frequency and intensity of hurricane hazards highlight the importance of developing high-resolution wind hazard models to better predict the consequences. Although previous studies have investigated hurricane-induced wind hazards in terms of hazard modeling and the subsequent vulnerability of buildings and infrastructure, these studies have not yet investigated applications of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) at the community-level. Therefore, in this study, a novel approach was developed to generate CFD models at the community-level by integrating building information modeling (BIM) and geographical information systems (GIS) to automate the generation of a high-resolution 3-D community model to be used as an input for a digital wind tunnel. This was done by harnessing the current advances in BIM and GIS applications and maximizing their capabilities by developing an algorithm that automates the 3-D geometry generation of communities with a detailed discretization of each building within the community. The 3-D community model was developed using the GIS shapefile of the buildings’ footprint and a parametric BIM model that uses a number of building parameters such as footprint dimensions, roof shape, foundation type, and the number of stories. Then, an algorithm was developed to automate the creation of the BIM model for each building within the community based on the prescribed building’s characteristics. The developed community model was used as an input for a numerical wind tunnel that uses CFD to account for the detailed wind pressure at each building after including the impacts of aerodynamics interference at the community-level. This novel BIM-GIS integration approach provides, for the first time, the next generation of high-resolution community-level CFD wind hazard modeling which aims to shift the current practice of wind hazard simulation at the community-level.

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