Building Information Modelling for High-rise Land Administration

Current land administration systems mainly use 2D plans to define and secure ownership rights associated with properties in high-rise buildings. These 2D plans may not effectively communicate and manage the spatial complexity associated with multi-layered and stacked properties in such buildings; additionally, multiple pages of plans (representing sections of the building) are required to represent all ownership boundaries. In response, land administration organizations have been investigating a 3D digital approach to managing information about ownership rights in high-rise building structures. In this article, Building Information Modeling (BIM) is proposed as a feasible approach for managing land and property information in high-rise buildings. BIM provides a collaborative, digital and intelligent 3D data environment for managing building information throughout the lifecycle of buildings. However, there is currently no capacity in BIM for recording and representing information about ownership and boundaries of properties, which is core land administration information. Therefore, this article proposes an extension to the BIM standard, which is implemented in a prototype BIM model of a complex building to showcase the potential capability of using BIM for high-rise land administration and for modeling 3D ownership rights.