Scoping Study for a Location Referencing Model to Support the BIM Environment

An extensive review of location reference literature and direct enquiry within Australian and New Zealand road authorities, is aggregated into a new theoretical framework for location, location reference methods (LRM) and location referencing systems (LRS). This virtual location framework establishes location as independent of any single physical representation of location and associated location reference method families. Three families of LRM are described; topological, geospatial and geometric. Common elements of each family are: points, lines, paths and areas. This project proposes a new Primary Location Reference System designed to support and to depend upon existing secondary reference systems and families of LRMs. The new system is an open standard location referencing method for horizontal network infrastructure. It is designed to support an Austroads Building Information Management (BIM) environment. In the new system, a National Hub for Location Referencing would store each location as an independent virtual object. The system would be designed to facilitate information exchange using an extended OpenLRTM, the location reference method adopted by the European DATEX II standard.