Simon Vilgertshofer

• Professor at Munich University of Applied Sciences

Digital Twins (DTs) provide a promising solution for bridge operation, thanks to their ability to mirror the physical conditions into a digital representation. At the core of the DTs is a geometric-semantic model. The modeling process for existing bridges, however, requires extensive manual effort. Given the high number of bridges in operation worl...

The design process in construction projects is iterative and multidisciplinary in nature. In today's industry practice, several discipline experts concurrently author multiple versions and design variants of BIM models and share them at frequent intervals. Applying a sound version control methodology can significantly enhance automation, enabling t...

Model-based collaboration has been identified as one of the key concepts in Building Information Modeling (BIM) to enhance productivity in construction projects. To-day's best practice and international standards demand "BIM level 2" which is based on transferring entire (do-main) models through file-based exchanges. However, this coarse granularit...

Modular construction is a method to respond to the high demand on bridge facilities while encountering a pressing need to reduce resource consumption and to respond to shortage of skilled labour. By standardising systems through modular parts and their interfaces, scale effects can be reached and related manufacturing and planning processes can be...

Automated progress monitoring builds an important foundation for objective productivity analysis of construction processes. Digital twins of the construction phase rely on fully automated approaches to acquire near real-time progress information. This is essential for identifying bottlenecks during construction and supporting future project plannin...

The high effort of operating and maintaining existing infrastructure facilities resulted in a large stock of structurally deficient bridges in most industrialized countries. Today, the condition assessment of bridges is conducted mostly manually. To relieve effort and costs, the digitization and automation of conventional manual, labour-intensive m...

Die Baustellenüberwachung ist heutzutage ein überwiegend manueller Prozess, bei dem die Ereignisse auf der Baustelle von Baustellenpersonal händisch dokumentiert werden. Diese ineffizienten, nicht mehr zeitgemäßen Arbeiten resultieren in einem erheblichen Zeit‐ und Kostenaufwand und einer hohen Fehleranfälligkeit. Demgegenüber bieten die rasanten E...

The high effort of operating and maintaining existing infrastructure facilities resulted in a large stock of structurally deficient bridges in most industrialized countries. Today, the condition assessment of bridges is conducted mostly manually. To relieve effort and costs, the digitization and automation of conventional manual, labour-intensive m...

Collaboration and communication are two essential aspects of Building Information Modeling (BIM). Current practice and international standards implement BIM collaboration on the basis of domain model federation where loosely coupled models are managed as separated files and coordinated in a mostly manual fashion. The concept has severe limitations...

Digital manufacturing methods have been successfully used in different industries for years and have since had a positive effect on the development of their productivity. These methods offer significantly greater design freedom and make it possible to develop shape-optimized and function-activated components. In the construction industry, however,...

Lean construction, originating from lean management, aims to proactively improve the overall efficiency of construction processes. This requires continuous assessment of performance to identify key problems, which allows continuous improvement of construction processes. Novel digital twin approaches form an excellent technological foundation for pe...

Current practice of BIM-based collaboration relies on the exchange of entire domain models, which are managed and shared using Common Data Environments. Such platforms are well standardized in terms of states, roles, and participants. However, the coordination of changes by exchanging entire models requires manual identification of any added, modif...

Capturing human knowledge underlying the design and engineering of products has been among the main goals of computational engineering since its very beginning. Over the last decades, various approaches have been proposed to tackle this objective. Among the most promising approaches is the application of graph theory for representing product struct...

p>Bridges require regular inspection and maintenance during their service life, which is costly and time-consuming. Digital twins (DT), which incorporate a geometric-semantic model of an existing bridge, can support the operation and maintenance process. The process of creating such DT models can be based on Point cloud data (PCD), created via phot...

Additive manufacturing (AM) is no longer a new technology and is already being used profitably in many sectors of the economy. AM is also becoming increasingly popular in the construction industry, and more and more research is focused on unlocking new building materials for AM. As a digital fabrication method, AM provides many new opportunities fo...

Für die Vorfertigung von Brückentragwerken in industrieller Fließfertigung sind weitreichende Veränderungen in Entwurf und Ausführung nötig. Deshalb erläutert dieser Aufsatz einen ganzheitlichen und durchgängig digitalen Planungsprozess für eine modulare Bauweise mit ebenen, additiv gefertigten Grundmodulen. Als Grundlage eines automatisierten Entw...

Collaboration and communication are two essential aspects of Building Information Modeling (BIM). Current standards such as ISO 19650 take this into account by propagating the concept of federated domain models based on file-based information containers (BIM level 2). In consequence, complete models are transmitted every time a new version is share...

Accurate data in the form of technical drawings of built assets are an essential requirement for the successful operation and reconstruction of the built environment. When the consistency between these data and the real-world situation cannot be ensured, the data are not reliable and need to be verified by comparing drawings and reality. Depending...

Computer-aided collaborative and multi-scale 3D planning are challenges for complex railway and subway track infrastructure projects in the built environment. Many legal, economic, environmental, and structural requirements have to be taken into account. The stringent use of 3D models in the different phases of the planning process facilitates comm...

For the design of large infrastructure projects such as inner-city subway tracks, it proves necessary to consider differing model scales, ranging from the scale of several kilometers down to a few millimeters. This challenge can be addressed by using multi-scale product models comprising multiple levels of detail (LoD). Ensuring consistency across...

This paper demonstrates how linked data can be used to provide a semantically rich connection between the domains of building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information systems (GIS). Expertise from both domains is necessary for the planning of infrastructure projects such as roads, tunnels, bridges, and railways, as these projects usual...