Microprism-based layered BIM modeling for railway station subgrade

Volumetric modeling for Railway Station Subgrade (RSS) is a complex task in applying BIM to railway stations. However, an effective method for handling RSS volumetric modeling, which is further complicated by heterogeneous data sources and geometric features, has been unavailable. To address this issue, this paper presents a BIM modeling method that generates layered microprisms to represent the volumetric information of an RSS. The proposed method is demonstrated with a real-world case, through which the modeling accuracy and the efficiency of spatial data retrieval are verified to be satisfactory. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by proposing a unified and accurate volumetric modeling method for the multi-layer structures. In the future, modeling efficiency can be further improved by introducing GPU-based parallel processing.