The uses of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in flood and excess water management

Abstract

BIM is a 3D-based, data-driven design method that supports the entire life cycle of structures (design, construction, operation). According to Decree 31/2024 of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, its use is mandatory for state investments, and by 2035, all state facilities – including water infrastructure – must be modelled retrospectively for more efficient design, construction and operation.

The 4 500 km protection system, built with 300 million cubic meters of earthworks since the 19th century, protects 2,5 million residents living on a quarter of the country's territory, a third of the agricultural land, a significant part of the transport network and 25% of the gross national product against floods. The domestic inland water system manages the inland water risk of non-drainage areas with a 46 000 km excess water system, pumping stations and structures, which has been a priority on par with flood protection and an ongoing engineering task since the flood relief of the Great Plain.

The advantages of BIM modelling are the integrated design process and common data environment, data consistency, life cycle approach, and collision tests that can be performed in the design phase. All of these increase the efficiency of design, construction, and operation, thereby saving time and costs and improving the quality of design and construction. All components of our current flood and inland water protection system can be produced in a BIM environment: embankments, structures, channels, and infrastructure elements created in 3D not only contain geometric dimensions and geographical location but are also provided with additional information (e.g. material qualities, static characteristics, water permeability).

I present the possibility of applying the BIM environment in flood and inland water protection by examining three foreign studies. The first case study is the Green-Water Wetland complex environmental development project in the Yangtze River area of ​​the capital of Jiangsu Province, China, where the design of the green-blue infrastructure related to the development of a complete new urban district was carried out using BIM software. The second case study presents the Watershed-BIM methodology, based on the investigation of the 2017 flash flood in Greece, which integrates building information and hydrodynamic modelling, GIS and flood risk assessment into a single 3D framework. The third case study focuses on the flood risk assessment using BIM tools, as the historic city centre of Lisbon is cumulatively exposed to sea level rise associated with climate change.