Introduction

This is the second, improved edition of a book about the foundations and principles of building information, its representation and management. In contrast to other books on the same subjects, it is not a how-to guide. It does not tell you which software or policies to choose for representing buildings and managing the resulting information. Instead, the book argues that one should not start with these practical steps before fully understanding the reasoning behind any such choice. This includes the structure of information and of the representations that contain it, the purposes of managing information in these representations and the situations in which the representations are used. In a nutshell: how information relates to the cognitive and social processes of a specific domain. Without adequate reasoning that covers all syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects, adopting this software or that and implementing this policy or that simply subjugate information processing to some prescriptive or proscriptive framework that may be unproductive or inappropriate for the domain and its professionals.

To explain these foundations and principles, the book brings together knowledge from various areas, including philosophy and computer science. Its perspective, nevertheless, remains bounded by the application domain: external knowledge is not imposed on domain practices but used to elucidate domain knowledge. Building information has its own peculiarities, drawn more from convention than necessity, and digitization has yet to address such matters, let alone resolve them. General knowledge about information and representation is essential for developing approaches fit for the digital era. The approach advocated in this book is above all parsimonious: in a world inundated with digital information (Part I), one should not resort to brute force and store or process everything. On the contrary, one should organize information intelligently, so that everything remains accessible but with less and more focused effort.

The first part of the book focuses on digitization as the opportunity and reason for paying even more attention to information than in previous eras, when many of the tools and approaches we still use today were formulated. This part was produced by splitting a single chapter in the first edition into two: Chapter 1 deals with digital information in general, while Chapter 2 focuses on digitization in AECO. The split hopefully makes clearer what has been happening in the domain of buildings while the digital revolution took place and why AECO needs to do more than just use available computing resources.

The second part explains representation. Many of the problems surrounding information and its management are caused when we ignore that most information, certainly regarding buildings, comes organized into representations. Knowing the structure of these representations provides connections to meaning and use, as well as insights into how information is produced and processed. Chapter 3 explains symbolic representations and analyses familiar spatial representations from a symbolic perspective. The analogue representations that still dominate building information are the subject of Chapter 4. Digitization is primarily considered with respect to BIM, as the first generation of truly symbolic, digital building representations (Chapter 5).

Information theory and management are the subjects of the third part of the book. Particular emphasis is on the meaning of information (semantics) as a foundation for utility and relevance. For this reason, this part starts by introducing a semantic theory of information that complements symbolic representation (Chapter 6). Next, Chapter 7 explains information management and how it applies to building information and BIM. It concludes with the principles that should guide building information management.

The fourth part of the book contains the most important changes from the first edition. Chapter 8 is completely new. It provides a summary of the influential dual-process theory of the mind, which has particular significance for decision making and the use of information in it. The next two chapters were produced by splitting a chapter of the first edition because some things I had originally considered a simple preliminary to developing information diagrams turned out to be a main learning objective for my students. Chapter 9 now deals more extensively with process diagrams, their structure and purpose, including in relation to cognitive biases and limitations. Chapter 10 covers the move from process to information diagrams, the validation of process designs, meaningful information management and support for Type 2 thinking.

Having explained the foundations and principles of representation and information management, the book rounds the subject off with a few larger exercises, which can be used as individual or group assignments (Part V). Through these exercises, learners can test their understanding of the approach advocated in this book and hone their skills for its application in research or practice.

Also new are the appendices. The first collects the necessary knowledge on graph theory in a compact overview and the second explains what parameterization actually does. Both are helpful for understanding critical parts of the book.