Infrastructure FM: Effective Maintenance of Railways and Roads Using BIM and GIS

MARCELLA FARAONE: Good afternoon, everybody. And thanks for coming today to hear from us the results of our activities. I'm Marcella Faraone. I'm from Italferr, Italy. And I'm the head of the Competence Center BIM GIS. I would like to introduce Paolo, who is [? supporting ?] me today in this class to present this class. Paolo, [? presenting. ?]

PAOLO QUADRINI: Hello, I am Paolo Quadrini from Autodesk Consulting. I'm a BIM expert technical expert. And I have collaborated with Italferr since 2015.

MARCELLA FARAONE: OK, so we are very happy to share with you the results of our activity, which is the integration between BIM and GIS. This integration, it's not only an integration from a technological point of view, but also we are reviewing processes inside our company.

So we can see the workflow between the BIM and the GIS data would the environment-- would you like to call this [INAUDIBLE] data? And we can see this workflow that throughout the entire infrastructure lifecycle management from this feasibility and concept design till the [? handover ?] and the facility management phase.

In this class, we will focus our attention on the facility management phase. And we will show how to achieve an effective maintenance integrating data from BIM and GIS. We will see how to plan effectively the maintenance, both ordinary and extraordinary managing this data. And we will see how to monitor the lines, railway, roads, and undergrounds, and tramway lines to prevent damages, for example from [INAUDIBLE] light. And we will see how to communicate effectively with the team distributed throughout the territory, sharing stored data in the clouds [INAUDIBLE] and Autodesk clouds.

Look at the agenda. I will talk briefly about our company, that is Italferr, and our team, the Competence Center BIM GIS. We will see the beginning of the project. And then we will go deeply in the specific workflow for facility management. Then we will see other examples of how is this useful to integrate the data for maintenance of the infrastructure and the how to prevent-- to monitor the line to prevent damages.

Let's start with a brief description of Italferr. Italferr is an engineering company belonging to the group Ferrovie dello Stato Italiano. We have several years of experience of large infrastructure projects like high speed rail, and conventional rail for transport, urban rail lines like underground tram lines. We have a a lot of experience in system integration and the high speed integration with existent lines.

Our expertise ranges from project management to construction site management supervision, from engineering design to innovation solutions and research, and testing and commission [? of new ?] railway lines and [? then ?] the [? older ?] railway lines.

Look at the figures. We have 34 years of experience. Currently, we are managing almost 1,000 projects, among these, 130 construction projects. And we have several offices in Italy and abroad. These are the offices in Italy. And the main projects in Italy regards mainly high speed rail, capacity, and corridors. We have several projects to connect the existent Italian lines the north of Italy from the other European countries.

We have been involved with the redesign, organization design of some metropolitan nodes like in major Italian cities like, Rome, Milan, Torino, et cetera. And these [? reorganizations ?] consist in a redesign of the connection between the stations and the other point of the city or the other station with the other urban transport. We are managing a project also for technology innovation on the existent railway lines, especially for the implementation of GSM.

These are the branches abroad. Abroad, we work especially for feasibility concept design, for [? detail ?] design of large infrastructure railway lines, underground lines, and for consultancy work. We work in the European Union, as already seen for the design of the corridors, in the other countries of Europe, in Africa, Algeria, Morocco, Ethiopia. In the Middle East, we work and manage the detail design of the Saudi land bridge which is 1,300 kilometers across the Saudi Arabia. And in Qatar, we work-- we design-- we be involved in a project of design, build the red line [INAUDIBLE] underground in Doha. We work also in Argentina, Peru, in India, and Australia.

Just a brief introduction of our team, Competence Center BIM GIS-- inside the organization chart of Italferr, we are under the strategy and innovations office, inside the IT department. And we've been supporting the introduction of BIM in Italferr since 2012. We've been involved in BIM management coordination, BIM coordination activity in the design of now the red line [INAUDIBLE] underground in Doha. And at present, the main objective of our team is the research on new technologies with [INAUDIBLE] workflow with BIM and GIS in order to support the core processes of Italferr, of our company, which are the engineering design and the construction site management. l

Just one year ago started this project that involved also Autodesk and ESRI. We established a partnership with the Autodesk, with accounting team and the consulting team. And Paolo is a representation of the Autodesk team this day in this class. And with ESRI Italia, the girls from ESRI.

Let's talk about the project. So as I already said, we consider workflow within these two platforms. So what we call the BIM model and GIS data, and this workflow can be used throughout the entire building lifecycle management.

We started this project almost two years ago with the Italferr geoportal. What is the Italferr geoportal? It is a place where to share all geographical information, as in geological surveys, map surveys, environmental constraint. But we finally found it very useful, also, to publish in this place also the information from the project, especially if design BIM Why? Why this? Because we think we will see that the-- take-- import the BIM model into the environment can allow us to take a great advantage from the potential-- for the potential-- [? great ?] potential analysis 2D and 3D GIS analysis.

These are the software used during these experimental activities. From one side, Autodesk software, we use BIM 360 as the common data environment to store all files on the project. To design the model, the entire infrastructure model, we used Civil 3D [? Revit ?] Dynamo. For 3D coordination for the simulation, we used Infoworks and Navisworks.

On the other side, we use-- these are the software. We use the data from geoportal and other [? XNR ?] sources and the ArcGIS Pro software, ArcGIS online, the first for 2D and 3D analysis. And the second to publish this data the entire data, the model data from the model and the [INAUDIBLE] information, that can be used from the apps Navigator and Collector.

Now we will see the workflow, a specific workflow in the facility management phase with the software used. Starting from the GIS data export-- at the beginning of the project, especially for infrastructure project-- a rail line, road, et cetera-- we have two geographical database to design and to model the entire infrastructure. So we use the ArcGIS Pro to elaborate this data, for example, the digital elevation model. And then with Autodesk Civil 3D Revit Dynamo we design and model the entire infrastructure.

All the model will then be imported into ArcGIS Pro and published into ArcGIS online to be used from the apps Navigator and Collector from the field operator for doing the maintenance operation. And then all-- the return, now, all the data changed in the maintenance operation will be imported into the BIM model to change the BIM model.

Now at present, Italferr is managing the concept design of the Brescia Tramway, a city in the north of Italy. We are using this project as a proof of concept to simulate the entire infrastructure lifecycle management, from feasibility design to handover and facility management. And now Paolo will show a demo, this will flow applied in this project for in the phase-- focusing, obviously, on the management phase.

PAOLO QUADRINI: So in this step by step workflow video, we will see quickly how to achieve the goal of collaboration, prevention, monitoring, and management in rail maintenance from a technical point of view. This is Brescia. And here you can see the white line. That is the [INAUDIBLE] Tramway Line Project. And in our proof of concept, we have retraced the BIM design process to provide and share BIM data to our GIS platform, and vise versa to move information from GIS to BIM.

Now let's start the video to see that more in detail. In this first part, I'm going to show you how to create a corridor in Civil 3D. So in a new file, we set coordinates by searching and selecting the correct coordinate system. As you know, to create a corridor, we need an alignment, a topographic surface, a profile, and an assembly. We import the alignment from an external file. And we use the shape file instead of a DWG, because the shape file is G referenced.

So we have the alignment. And we just have to turn on the aerial map to see if the coordination is well done. And now we have to create the alignment. Because before it was just a [? pulley ?] line. And this [? pulley ?] line is composed of four tracks. Two are left and right main tracks. And the other are a part of our [INAUDIBLE]. We convert every track to an alignment.

We could have created the alignment just inside Civil 3D. But in our workflow, the civil designers didn't use Civil. We can now import the surface, a DEM surface, so a digital elevation model. We took this open data from [? INSPRA, ?] an Italian Institute of Environment, Protection, and Research. And we elaborated it with our GIS Pro. Civil 3D adds some problem to import this kind of data.

So we create that profile and then our profile view. These 2D [? pulley ?] lines-- this [? pulley ?] line shows us the height of the-- as you know, the height of the alignment. Here you can see just one profile. We have four profiles. And now it's time to create an assembly. We have three types of assembly, a single way, a double way that's full of both left and right tracks-- we have here the marked point that ensured the joint between the two part of assembly-- and a tunnel way.

So we create the corridor with all the parameters, the type of assembly, and the target surface. And we set all parameters to set all regions, all targets, or what we need. And we have the corridor. Then we have to extract the corridor in DWG.

So extract the corridor. We set the parameter. We choose what kind of element to extract. And we save the DWG externally. So unfortunately, we don't have yet the possibility to link directly our civil corridor into Revit or to import it as a generic model.

So in this case, we pass through Dynamo and import the geometry. But Dynamo, out of the box, doesn't manage DWG file. So we had to open the DWG file in AutoCAD and export the SAT file.

So we open the DWG from AutoCAD. We select all geometries. And we export the geometry, the 3D geometry in a [? SAT ?] file. After that, in a new Revit project with a standard template, we have to set the coordinates. And we do that by importing the alignment CAD file. It's another file, not the same.

As you can see, the Revit project base point is set to zero. Here so-- a little-- no, it's zero. It's normal. And we have to acquire the coordinates from this CAD. And we check the new coordinates. And we erase the CAD.

So we open Dynamo. We select the SAT file. And we run the Dynamo definition. And depending on the size of the SAT file, it takes several or a few minutes.

Now we have the corridor is not really Revit [? family. ?] It's just a direct shape, so it's only geometry. But in this case, we need only geometry to move this information to our GIS.

It's different with the punctual element. Because here we have linked all the punctual elements. As you can see now, the mass cable, the traffic lights, and so on. And these kind of elements have all the Revit information, not only geometry.

Now in this third part, we will see how to set up the work environment to quickly plan the work orders and to use this set to go and work on the field. In our GIS Pro, we create a new local scene. We have the default map. And we add a folder connection to create a link with the folder that contains all Revit files in our desktop, for example. ArcGIS needs a link with a desktop.

So here we have the BIM from Italferr, [? 28-10-18. ?] Here we have all the Revit files we need. Now we have to set the system coordinates. And we assign the same coordinates we used in Civil, obviously.

So now ArcGIS is charging the new projected map with the UTN zone 32, the same of Civil. Now we have the new map. It's a projected map, not a global map. And-- I'm sorry-- some-- and we turned off the-- we a new detailed map the same we used in Civil, so our DEM surface.

And now we turn off the world elevation for the terrain-- the default terrain. And now we see we can navigate inside our Revit file. So it's really a Revit file. It's not an IFC or another kind of exchange file. ArcGIS can read directly our Revit file. So we have the discipline and the categories. It's very easy, also, to import this file inside the ArcGIS Pro, just drag and drop.

And to the left panel, the contents, we see all-- fan all category we insert inside the ArcGIS as a 3D layer, not a Revit element. So we have the 3D layers on the left, and the Revit file on the right.

Now we take a look on the punctual elements we have loaded-- added. So these elements are Revit elements with all information. So only the corridor has the geometry information. But the traffic lights, switch boxes, mass cable, and also the panel I have whole information from Revit.

Now to make our scene catcher, we add also the Brescia building footprints. But it's two dimensional-- be dimensional. So we create a virtual 3D representation. And we take the height information of the buildings inside the building. And we create a 3D representation. It's not really 3D. It's just a representation. It's not solid.

Now again, a little tour inside the tramway-- and now we have to create the scene on the cloud. And to do that, we have to publish on ArcGIS online all the multipatches feature class we need. Multipatch is a 3D element on ArcGIS. We have also other kinds of feature classes, like point, lines, polygon, and so on.

So we just imported file on ArcGIS Pro. We see here the corridor. But we have not yet converted the Revit information into something ArcGIS can read, edit, and handle. So we export the Revit geometry into feature classes, multipatches. We do that in our geodatabase-- this one. We drag and drop inside the ArcGIS Pro workspace this new multipatch.

And now we have to share as a web layer this multipatch, this corridor, in ArcGIS online, so on the cloud. We type a name, a summary, a tag, a folder, and a group. We publish. But before to publish usually it is a good practice to analyze the multipatch. But it takes several minutes. So we didn't do that.

We do the same with the MSR phase. Again, name, and summary, tags, folder, and group, and we publish the DEM surface. We go to the portal, the ArcGIS online. We log in. And we have to create a new local scene. New Scene, and New Local Scene-- it's different to the global scene.

Now we have the standard map. So we have to add all layers we need, so the DEM surface and the corridors. We have added the map. We can remove the default one. And we search the web layer we created, the corridor generic model. So we had this corridor-- just some second-- and then we can zoom on the corridor. And Save Scene-- again, a title, a summary, a tag, and when we save the scene, we can share this scene with other people inside our team. So the group is-- to choose the group is very important. Because people outside the group cannot see our scene, what we have [? done. ?]

Here we added also the buildings in an area surrounding the alignment. Because it was very big data. And we have, again, all Revit elements, the punctual elements. For example, this switch box had so many information and also a link to BIM 360 model.

After that, in the following step we will describe a possible workflow to engage the workers in the field with the use of Navigator and Collector for ArcGIS. So we will prepare a map and a route.

To create route planning, we have added the work orders, the pink one, the purple one starting from the Revit elements. So every work order point contains a link to the BIM 360 Revit element. We have, again, all the information of the Revit information we uploaded on BIM 360.

Now we create the route layer. We import-- we have to create the stops. And the stops are the same of the work order. So we have to import the stop from the work orders. And we have now the stops at the same place of the work orders.

We can choose some details, some information about the route planning. And now we have to run the route analysis to have our route-- preplanned route to give this information to the worker on the field. Now we have to share, to upload on the web, this kind of information, again, with a name, a summary, a tags, and a folder, and group.

Now, have on ArcGIS online. We log in again. We have to create a new map, the new map for work order from content. We create a new map. And we added all the web layers. So here we have the link to this preplanned route. And we can share this link to our workers, to our group.

Now we do the same thing with the work orders before we share the route. Now we shared the work orders in order to give to inspectors the possibility to collect and to modify, to edit all the information on the field and to put this information, this modification, inside the cloud.

So we do, again, the same things. We share as a web layer this information. We publish. Now we create a new map, a new map with a title, work orders, some tag, a summary, and then a folder, and group.

So now we have the same scenario we had in ArcGIS Pro. But we are in ArcGIS online now. So we have the purple points, the work orders, with the same information we had in ArcGIS Pro, so the link to the BIM 360 in the same element. And now we share this information with the users inside the group we choose. We save, and that's it.

Now we build a simulation on the field to see a possible use of what we have prepared. So now you can see our handsome actor simulating a normal working day. He received an email with the work order we prepared before. And he starts his task.

So with his tablet, he opens his email. He taps on the email link. That opened ArcGIS online. And again, he taps on Navigator stop list. Navigator starts. And he has just to start the navigation.

Now we can appreciate the city of Rome. Of course, we could have chosen, I don't know, a simulation maintenance near the Colosseum. But it would have seemed so unreal.

Now we are on the switch box. So the operator take a look of the situation of the switch box. He can find all information he needs inside BIM 360 with the link inside the Navigator and Collector. He can make some kind of query, like so he can take some measure. It's a little bit difficult to take a measure here. And he can navigate the information of the element inside the properties. We have all information. We switch back on the collector. And we can start to move on the second stop.

So from Collector, the ArcGIS environment opened the Navigator. We are on the next step with a traffic light. Here another example of a Revit element inside the BIM 360 with all properties. And here we are, the team on the field.

MARCELLA FARAONE: Greetings from Rome. OK. Look at again the workflow shown step by step by Paolo. We experimented an alternative scenario, tried to simplify the workflow. And we used-- already with ArcGIS Pro in some way, Civil 3D Revit [INAUDIBLE] and BIM 360 Docs next gen. And we imported the old data into BIM 360 Glue to create the sets of equipment. And then we published the data in Field BIM 360 Classic to make a mapping between set of equipment in order to generate the bar code, QR code, of every single equipment.

In this way, we can substitute Collector with the app BIM 360 Field and read information of each single equipment, each single element with the direct read. We can direct read the QR code of the element in the field with the iPad.

In this way, the operator work will be simplified. But the workflow is too much complicated. Because we have to use BIM 360 next gen, Docs, and the Classic. As far as we know, the entire workflow will be implemented into the next gen platform. So to experiment this part again in this way will we wait for the BIM 360, the entire workflow implemented in the BIM 360 Field management next gen.

Now let's see other example again to see how it's useful, this integration between BIM and GIS. This is a portion of the line [? mount ?] or the red line [? mount ?] underground in Doha. [INAUDIBLE] Also all the tunnels, all the stretches between one section to the other has been modelled-- the structure, the architectural part, and also the equipment. Now putting together the geographical coordinates-- in analogy as already seen in the demo shown by Paolo-- and visualizing the elements, all the information maintenance of each element we can simplify. We can have an effect in maintenance of the mapping and tunnel.

Just another example of this integration, its regard the underground utilities. During the maintenance of the Tramway lines or the railway lines, we have to involve all the stakeholders responsible for the maintenance of the underground utilities-- aqueduct, the [? sewer, ?] and the public lighting system. And so we can use ArcGIS Pro with first [INAUDIBLE] first analysis to see, to importing the data on the alignment and the corridor to see all the underground utilities involved in the maintenance.

We can transform this 2D data into 3D data using the functionality feature 2D, 3D by attribute and using the information on the depth values of the pipes. And we can transform a 2D to 3D data in order to highlight the pipes. And we can create a 3D buffer area around the corridor. In this way, you can highlight-- you can see the pipes highlighted in yellow-- all the pipes to be done first doing maintenance work, and all information regarding these utilities and the stakeholders responsible to be involved with them.

Another useful analysis during the maintenance work could be the network analysis. Especially inside a city, during the maintenance work, we have to interrupt a way that intersects the alignment. And so we can quickly recalculate the route to avoid the issue-- many issues to the traffic. And we can plan these very easily these alternative routes when maintenance, the work site moves along the lines.

We can use the network analysis also to calculate the best route for the waste management from the work site to the depot site. Also, with a look to the sustainability, we are working inside the city we have to prevent damage from pollution.

We can monitor in an effective way the lines. We can see now-- we will see two examples. This is the Tramway alignment. And the green area is an area of hydrogeological risk. So merging the data of the project with the map of the hydrogeological risk could help us to prevent flooding in the area around the line, for example.

This is an example of the project that is in Italferr currently managing. The [? IXP ?] [? railway ?] that goes from [? Fortezza ?] to [? Punto Gardena, ?] two localities in the Northeast of Italy. We were working on the detail design of the high speed rail that goes from this side to this side when the geological department found to the analysis of the picture taken from satellite a body landslide upstream the line the points in red.

Geological surveys and interferometric data confirmed that the body, the landslide was still active. So the design was changed. The alignment was changed from this to this. But in this, we have also a highway and a conventional line still existent. So an extraordinary maintenance was ordered for the highway and the conventional line near the body landslides to prevent damages in the future.

Now some points of attention-- we are at the end of this presentation. We are still at some critical points in with technology integration from every platform and the Autodesk software. The issue, if the issue will be solved, we can simplify the workflow and simplify the work of the design, or the construction site [INAUDIBLE].

For example, we saw the example of an underground utilities. The still difficult to export the three data from the other platform to Autodesk softer like Navisworks, for example, for 3D coordination, or for the design of the station to connect the station equipment to the aqueduct pipe, public lighting system.

There are still issues, too, as we see, to import the corridors model design in Civil 3D into ArcGIS Pro. Their workflow will be simplified if the integration between Civil 3D and Revit could be enhanced.

So conclusions-- we saw the benefit of the integration between BIM and GIS and how to get started with a workflow between the two platforms, [INAUDIBLE] and Autodesk, how to monitor in an effective way the lines, how to achieve an effective maintenance, and how to communicate effectively with a team distributed throughout the territory, storing the data in the Autodesk clouds and ESRI clouds.

Thank you again for coming. Please remember to fill out the survey on this class. Goodbye.

[LAUGHTER]

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