BIG BIM little bim by Finith E. Jernigan AIA The Practical Approach to Building Information Modeling - Integrated Practice done the right way!

Comments on the OGC Adoption of .kml Standards

Finith E. Jernigan, AIA
author of "BIG BIM little bim"

I remember the blustery winter day in Cleveland where I first saw Keyhole in 2002.

It seemed like a miracle.

For the first time I could really visualize geographic data without the baggage that came with GiS (Geographic Information Systems). I could really zoom into a site and get a real-world view, without knowing much of anything about GiS. The only limitations revolved around the fact that you pretty much had to be part of the Federal government to use it.

Then along came Google.

Google bought Keyhole in 2004. Keyhole then became Google Earth and all was well. It looked like geography and architecture were finally coming together to enable BIG BIM. Yet, buried deep in this wonderful development was a deep dark secret that might stop progress in its tracks.

The secret revolved around a simple question - ‘Who owns the information?'

Proprietary information could scuttle the whole system. There needed to be a way to make sure that the information would remain available and usable. There needed to be standards…not Google standards; but standards that were public and shared with everyone.

Without such standards, Google Earth would continue to be a very cool tool.

With such standards it could become the foundation for new ways to do business that let us achieve real sustainability.

On April 14, 2008 the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced that they have adopted KML (Keyhole Markup Language) as an OGC standard. This announcement creates the foundation for moving forward with confidence.

We can now create and share geographic information directly linked to the design and construction process. We now know that we have a dependable and repeatable way to communicate and amass information.

And, it is all due to an open standard that makes a very cool product even cooler.