Dennis Shelden, founder and chief technology officer of Gehry Technologies spoke during one of the Innovation Forums at Autodesk University today in Las Vegas. In addition to displaying sophisticated high-rise housing that is enabled by the BIM process, he highlighted the convergence of CAD and GIS in the planning process at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.
Gehry Technologies worked with the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center to help plan and coordinate the 13 independent projects at the World Trade Center site. The need at the site was for deep information sharing and coordination, that allowed stakeholders to make actionable decisions, and to communicate that information with the public.
The resulting 4D model at the urban scale is available online via LowerManhattan.info, allowing the public to track all the projects being built over a 10-year timeline. In addition, the site pulls together information from multiple projects for the individual building stakeholders, with close coordination that gets all the way down to specific construction and integration strategies. The most compelling example of the close coordination of construction around subway lines that impact 100,000 people that use the subway daily. The 4D capabilities of the site allow any user to go to any point in time and see the construction projects that are happening.
The close connection of these changes to the citizen is a compelling example of CAD and GIS integration. The close details of the planning, combined with a database that records and communicates changes, gives all stakeholders and the public the ability to manage personal impacts and to predict upcoming actions to avoid those impacts.
