Sustain GEOBIM—a New Method to Simulate Sustainable Development Scenarios for Urban Areas

In 2015, 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) signed the 2030 Agenda, entitled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,”. The planned implementation by 2030, leaves only a decade to realize the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Municipalities and cities constitute important stakeholders, who are obliged under SDG 11, to find ways to develop realistic solutions. Implementation and strategic planning require, among other things, new instruments to digitally model various sustainable development scenarios. Currently, however, it is still unclear what has to be modelled and how. What is clear is that sustainability and digitalization have to come together to deliver results. Several key challenges need to be overcome. First, is the heterogeneity of existing data and documents used in the built environment. Future solutions will depend on a combination of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS). Second, is the merging of different existing data on an adequate level of abstraction which allows practical use of GIS and BIM data in a common model. Third, is the development of functioning, cost-effective workflows that will enable broad applications which adequately simulate specific sustainability aspects using spatial and temporal scenarios. This paper shows how these challenges can be systematically addressed in practice. It demonstrates which aspects of sustainability can be made visible and comprehensible for all stakeholders using only one single BIM- and GIS based data model. The proposed workflow could thus be considered as the basis for planning the next generation of smart and sustainable cities.