Seeking Feedback: Combining GIS + BIM for Soil Contamination Visualization – Any Prior Art or Tools

BOUAMJADBOUAMJAD
in General

Hi everyone,

I’m part of a small research duo (environmental + IT background) working on an exploratory workflow combining GIS and BIM for visualizing subsurface soil contamination in 3D. We're currently doing a technical proof of concept and would appreciate any insights, examples, or tooling suggestions from people who've worked on similar problems.

Context:

  • We often receive environmental datasets during soil remediation projects, such as:
  • Borehole logs (XY coordinates, depth intervals, pollutant concentrations – often Excel or PDF),
  • Site plans or DWG/PDF maps,
  • Tables showing pollutants like TCE, PCE per depth.
  • Sometimes these boreholes lack spatial coordinates. We use QGIS to georeference the site plan and manually assign X/Y to each point. Elevation (Z) is taken from available DTM data or approximated early on.

Conceptual Workflow (so far):

  • Format data into a consistent structure (CSV with ID, X, Y, Z, depth, concentration, etc.)
  • Model the topography
  • Place boreholes in 3D
  • Subdivide the site into a grid/mesh (soil blocks)
  • Apply interpolation (e.g., linear) to estimate pollution spread
  • Output 2D/3D maps showing pollution extents and volumes

Current Goals:

  • Visualize contaminant plumes in 2D/3D
  • Estimate volumes above regulatory thresholds (e.g., >1 mg/kg)
  • Support remediation strategy planning

We’re not trying to develop a product at this stage — it’s more of a technical exploration of methods/tools. Ideally, we'd like to work with open-source technologies, support IFC/industry formats, and possibly make it browser-accessible.

Looking for Advice On:

  • Best tools/libraries for 3D environmental data modeling?
  • Thoughts on using Blender + BlenderBIM vs Revit or other?
  • Appropriate interpolation methods for sparse borehole data?
  • Any examples (academic or industrial) that tackled something similar?

  • How others have handled GIS ↔ BIM interoperability in practice?

We’ve found scattered examples but no full pipeline yet — so any ideas, links, tools, or even what not to do would be super appreciated!

Thanks in advance, and happy to clarify any point!

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Comments

  • RaphaëlVouillozRaphaëlVouilloz
    edited May 15

    Interesting! have you tried BlenderGIS?
    https://github.com/domlysz/BlenderGIS

    theoryshawBOUAMJADKoAraAce
  • JanFJanF

    I just wrote a guide on BlenderGIS and topography for the wiki page, but it is down right now.
    1. I'd definitely stick with open source tools for this, I work with revit daily and don't see any benefits in using it in this case.
    2. Do you actually need a 3D mesh model? You can achieve a lot with just plain gis, python and geolocated raster files - this would actually seem to be the perfect use case and you could probably do it all in one software.
    3. If you really want a visual 3D model, I'd consider a voxel based workflow, it would allow you to generate sections showing contamination depth
    4. Regarding interpolation algorithms, Sverchok has field nodes which should do what you need if I understand it correctly.

    BOUAMJADatomkarincaAce
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