Improving communities through knowledge intensive regeneration - Mediacity Iconic Project : 2nd deliverable about vision for BIM&GIS integration for sustainable communities

This study is about to measure and project the impact of regeneration projects on the surrounding communities via the expansion of BIM with GIS from building scale to urban scale in order to be able to consider social sustainability indicators as well as the physical and environmental sustainability indicators through the case study research using MediaCityUK regeneration project. In this regard, research team investigates the influence between environmental sustainability themes such as energy and physical sustainability themes such as retrofit and social sustainability themes such as health primarily, education and employability.Lately, the further concentration has been given on Health Impact Assessment (HIA) experiences as it has been carried out in a qualitative and subjective manner, which has high risk of inaccurate evaluation. Further, there is no formal quantitative method of HIA at the masterplanning phase to envision the impact of a regeneration project on the health of the surrounding communities. Thirdly, it provides a way forward to identify the bilateral association between energy performance of a building and health and well being of dwellers living or working in that building. Finally, there are more data available regarding to health for the MediaCityUK project. The research team is also forming a wider consortium for futher research by involving practioners in ordsal area such as people in the public services and the city council such as Fiona Reynold from Salford NHS, Alistair Fisher from public health Service and David McKelvey from Ordsal, local GP. To be able to obtain tangible results that are linked to interaction of social and environmental sustainability issues, research team proposes a conceptual system to be developed in a follow up research. This conceptual system is integrated use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Building Information Modelling (BIM). In this system, BIM is used for enabling physical data (materials, energy etc.) and GIS is used for spatial classification and processing of social and physical data. At this stage, research team prepared a system architecture diagram for the integration strategy. As soon as a feedback from the health professionals from NHS, Salford City Council and Salford University is obtained, ontology is going to be formed for “HIA via GIS-BIM integrated assessment tool”. Research team currently issued the second deliverable and circulated it to all potential stakeholders and currently works on the demonstration of this implementation and as soon as the ontology is formed, a demo would be available. In addition, the third documentation will be a journal paper for publishing.This conceptual system will have capability for the interactive assessment between health (soft issues), energy and retrofit (hard issues). However, this scope can be expanded in follow-up projects as long as correlations are specified through ontology development. At the same time, BIM is investigated for project management of relocation of some departments of the university to the Mediacity and the facilities management purposes. This will give an opportunity i) to recommend a quick win solution of how BIM can help the university for relocation, ii) to better understand the use of BIM for retrofit, iii) explore the philosophies in facilities management about soft issues between building and the users of the building are defined at an individual building level, which can then help for the development of the ontology between buildings and the users at a wider context such a regeneration