How Open Standards Connect All Stages of Geotechnical Practice

Synopsis

The geotechnical engineering value chain generates rich data at every stage, from ground investigation through ground modelling, geotechnical analysis and design, to instrumentation and monitoring, yet this data is hard to access without specialist software, and is therefore almost never visualised in context with the BIM and GIS information that surrounds it.

This talk introduces a unifying insight: all geotechnical data, regardless of its origin in the value chain, can be expressed as geometry combined with properties. This simple concept makes geotechnical data compatible with 3D GIS tools and open BIM platforms such as Speckle, enabling interactive visualisation in context with topography, surrounding buildings, infrastructure models, and any other spatially referenced datasets.

The presentation walks through the data structures that map to each stage of geotechnical practice:

• 3D geospatial vector data for boreholes, CPTs and instrumentation & monitoring data;

• surface meshes and voxel models for ground models;