Abstract
Geographic information systems (GIS) and building information modeling (BIM) have many common features and functions for data management and data display and illustration. As part of the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS), the statewide traffic data in Indiana is updated and presented through the GIS method. The attributes of highway location, geometry, and traffic information are expressed and displayed using shapefiles. However, the functionalities of shapefiles in GIS are rather limited in comparison with various BIM features and functions. This paper presents a method to establish a BIM model to replace the existing GIS model in order to improve the effectiveness of traffic information management. The existing GIS traffic information model displays the traffic volumes recorded with portable and temporary traffic data collection devices at the selected sample spots on the Indiana highway network. However, not included in the GIS model are the important traffic attributes recorded with weighin-motion (WIM) and automatic traffic recorder (ATR) devices, such as vehicle types, speeds, and axle weights. This paper presents the process of converting the existing GIS model to a BIM-based traffic information management model. The traffic data was expanded to include the WIM and ATR recorded traffic data so that vehicle types, speeds, and axle weights can also be stored and illustrated through the BIM platform. An automatic transformation method was developed and presented in this study. The BIM system has demonstrated strong advantages over the GIS system with respect to traffic data storage, representation, and management.
