BIMstocks – Digital Urban Mining Platform for Assessing the Material Composition of Existing Buildings

The construction sector is one of the most resource-intensive industries: in Austria, construction and demolition activities account for around 70% of total annual waste. At the same time, existing buildings offer great potential as an urban raw material repository. However, there is currently no comprehensive database on the material composition of existing buildings – a major obstacle to the recycling and reuse of building components.

BIMstocks addresses this issue: The aim is to develop a scalable digital methodology for recording, analysing and modelling the material composition of typical existing buildings – as a basis for a secondary raw materials register and for urban demolition and recycling strategies.

Why BIMstocks?

• The systematic coupling of BIM with GIS enables a digital assessment of the building stock at building and city level.
• The use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) and machine learning supports the automated collection of material structure data.
• A BIM object catalogue for typical Viennese building types promotes replicability and scalability.
• The digital urban mining platform makes recycling potential visible and usable for research, planning and administration.

Project Description

At the heart of BIMstocks is the development of an integrated digital recording methodology that ranges from individual components to city-wide modelling. It is based on a BIM-based object catalogue for typical existing buildings in Vienna, supplemented by ‘as-built’ BIM models and material analyses using GPR.

Predictive modelling and GIS coupling create a scalable urban mining platform that supports public and private actors in the recording, evaluation and utilisation of secondary raw material potential.

Vision

BIMstocks makes a key contribution to the circular economy in construction. By combining building information modelling, geoinformation technologies and AI-supported material analysis, the building stock of the city of Vienna is being systematically recorded as a resource for the first time. TU Wien is thus sending a strong signal for future-oriented research in the interests of sustainable urban development and resource-efficient construction practices.