Managing and Retrieving Spatial Information in Architectural Floor Plan Databases

This research investigates spatial information retrieval in architecture focused on constructing efficient metadata that is crucial for data retrieval. Generally speaking, metadata is ‘structured data about data’ to describe resources especially in digital realm. In this research, metadata is a sort of data object useful in searching spatial information, to describe raw spatial data objects with not only attribute but also content consisted of structure and semantics. There are two issues that motivate this research; 1) how to represent intangible space as a form of data object, and 2) how to search and browse these data objects in a huge database, an issue of content-based information retrieval. We analyze spatial information of a floor plan, especially focused on the apartment unit floor plan common in Korea. Then we extract the metadata items in a structured manner. To manage the items efficiently, we develop a data model for spatial information according to the concept of “Structured Floor Plan.” For exploiting the metadata, this research shows several possibilities of query operations to present a set of sample queries about L-D-K(Living room - Dining room - Kitchen). Implementation of the prototype system is divided into three parts: 1) a modeling module, Vitruvius; 2) an indexing module, SpaceCore; and 3) a browsing module, SpaceScope.