buildingdescriptors

Building descriptors are structured sets of attributes used to represent the physical, functional, and contextual characteristics of buildings. They serve as compact, machine- and human-readable summaries that support tasks such as search and retrieval, classification, simulation, energy modeling, mapping, and visualization.

Descriptors vary by purpose and scale. Geometric descriptors capture shape, footprint, height, and volumetric metrics. Semantic descriptors record usage, occupancy, materials, and construction type. Structural descriptors describe load-bearing elements and systems. Visual descriptors encode façade patterns, textures, and color. Contextual descriptors cover location, proximity to infrastructure, land use, and environmental factors such as solar exposure or flood risk.

Creation methods include manual annotation in building information modeling (BIM) systems, automated extraction from LiDAR point clouds and photogrammetry, remote sensing and multispectral imagery, and inference from cadastral records or crowdsourced mapping platforms. Common interchange formats and standards that carry building-related attributes include IFC (Industry Foundation Classes), CityGML, and tagged data in OpenStreetMap, although specific descriptor schemas vary by domain.

Practical applications span urban planning, asset management, emergency response, autonomous navigation, historical preservation, and game and film production. Key challenges are heterogeneity of data sources, scale and level-of-detail management, interoperability between standards, and privacy concerns when descriptors reveal sensitive occupancy or ownership information. Ongoing work focuses on improving automated extraction, standardization of descriptor vocabularies, and integration with real-time sensor networks.