B2 - Chapter 3 'Interoperability' - Sarah Hollis

By definition, interoperability is ‘the ability of computer systems to exchange and make use of information’ (Eastman, 2013). In most architects offices or engineers offices around the world there will be a BIM manager; someone who’s job it is to collate all changes and ensure they are all saved to the main model in order for other contractors to view and make comments. Advancements in BIM repositories are hoping to eliminate this laborious and time-consuming job replacing it with self-managed BIM repositories which have the ability to synchronize and manage the changes made in all different fields to the model. For this, a developed understanding of the coding required for mechanical, architectural, electrical and civil standards are needed. Both computer scientists and those in the field are required to develop this process and to agree on the standards laid out by this merging of forces. In some respects, this may bring to light some common errors between different fields, due to differing standards being used.

There are some major issues which still need to be overcome in order to have an effective exchange of data between applications. Eastman wrote that ‘measurements lack tolerance properties’, what I think he means by this is that there may be a range of values for a particular object or body property, this could be due to construction errors, weather, code standards etc. Another problem is in translation; this is not so much in terms of different languages but it is more problematic when data exchange is required between two different alphabets; interoperability at its current stage of development is not yet truly reliable to exchange data and merge models written in different alphabets.

Interoperability is not a new concept, it has been going on since the 1970’s with the earliest examples being the translation of Intergraph. For storm water management application SWMM, .txt files are being used, this is another example of data exchange between applications reducing the need for employees to copy data from one application to another.