Vagueness visualization in building models across different design stages

The iterative and developing nature of designing a building involves the specification and handling of vague, imprecise, and incomplete information. A crucial factor for mitigating the impact of these uncertainties on the decision-making process is to effectively quantify and communicate them among the project stakeholders. The interactive visualization of 3D building models provides great support for evaluating building designs. However, the currently available visualization methods of the available authoring tools do not incorporate the potential uncertainties associated with the geometric and semantic information of building elements. Currently, building models appear precise and certain, even in the early design stages, which can lead to false assumptions and model evaluations, affecting the decisions made throughout the design stages. Hence, this paper presents a set of visualization approaches, including intrinsic, extrinsic, animation, and walkthroughs, that have been developed to present the uncertainties associated with the building elements’ information. The efficiency of the approaches developed in this study was evaluated through an online survey and interviews. More specifically, the approaches were compared in terms of intuitiveness, applicability, and acceptance. The evaluation results positively indicated the participants’ ability to understand the amount and impact of the uncertainties on the design by using the developed approaches.