Building information modeling (BIM) has been widely applied in conjunction with the industry foundation class (IFC) for buildings and infrastructure such as railways. However, a limitation of the BIM technology presents limitations that make designing the three-dimensional (3D) alignment-based information models difficult. Thus, the time and effort required to create a railway track model are increased, while the reliability of the model is reduced. In this study, we propose a methodology for developing an alignment-based independent railway track model and extended IFC models containing railway alignment information. The developed algorithm using BIM software tools allows for a discontinuous structure to be designed. The 3D alignment information connects different BIM software tools, and the classification system and IFC schema for expressing railway tracks are extended. Moreover, the classification system is fundamental for assigning IFC entities to railway components. Spatial and hierarchical entities were created through a developed user interface. The proposed methodology was implemented in an actual railway track test. The possibility of managing IFC-based railway track information, including its 3D alignment information, was confirmed. The proposed methodology can reduce the modeling time and can be extended to other alignment-based structures, such as roads.

Infrastructure usability becomes limited during a heavy snowfall event. In order to prevent such limitations, damage calculations and a decision-making process are needed. Snow-removal routing is a type of relevant disaster-prevention service. While three-dimensional (3D) models support these measures, they contain complex information regarding compatibility. This study generates a city-level semantic information model for roads using CityGML, an open standard data schema, and calculates the optimal snow removal route using this model. To this end, constraint conditions are analyzed from the viewpoint of a snow-removal vehicle, and a road network for an optimal route is applied to a 3D road information model. Furthermore, this study proposes a new algorithm that reduces the number of nodes used in the optimal route calculation, and a genetic algorithm is used to find the solution of the formulated objective function. This new algorithm reduces the number of nodes to less than two-thirds that of the original numbers when determining the optimal travel route for snow-removal vehicles in the target area.