Planning utility infrastructure requirements for smart cities using the integration between BIM and GIS

Rapid urbanization is one of the present characteristics in both developed and developing countries. It is projected that by 2050 around 68 % of the world's population shall live in urban areas. As a result, many city development initiatives are proposed by various research centers or through academia to aid in managing the process. One of the most evolving concepts through the past two decades is Smart Cities. The concept of smart cities has been defined and formulated by many research efforts and organizations. However, most of these definitions and initiatives focus on the operation stage of the city. This paper proposes an inclusive framework for integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographical Information System (GIS) to plan and forecast the utility infrastructure needs for expanding and emerging cities to highlight the concept of smartness during the planning stage. The considered infrastructure needs are freshwater consumption, sewage capacity and electrical energy requirements. Firstly, the city is broken down into several districts, lands and plots. Afterwards, through the assignment of relevant land use, building type information and various other information, an interactive tool is originated to allow for the formulation of different city development schemes and the representation of their respective resulting infrastructure needs. The framework is targeted to be flexible enough in order to be applied to any city, not just a single case as smart city solutions need to adopt to diverse cities' needs. The proposed framework is advocated to enforce the concept of both smart and sustainable cities by taking a closer look at the city's planning and development stages and infrastructure requirements which shape a sizable part of the city's performance throughout its expansion and development. It can also serve as a decision support tool for better planning and management of smart city infrastructure requirements. Finally, a case study is represented to demonstrate the practical features of the proposed framework.