Provides Stakeholders a Decentralized, Tamper-Proof, Single Source of Truth for Urban Assets
This blockchain-enabled City Information Modeling (CIM) platform gives stakeholders in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) industry a decentralized, tamper-proof, single source of truth for urban assets. Every building, road, bridge, and utility line in a city generates records for decades: design models, material specifications, ownership changes, inspections, and repairs. Today, those records are scattered across architects, contractors, owners, and public agencies, each working in separate systems. Records are lost at handover or overwritten, asset histories are hard to verify, and city-wide decisions rest on incomplete data. A landmark NIST study estimated that inadequate interoperability costs the U.S. capital facilities industry $15.8 billion annually, with owners and operators bearing $10.6 billion of that cost. The pressure to manage existing assets well is growing with the American Society of Civil Engineers estimating the U.S. needs $9.1 trillion in infrastructure investment from 2024 to 2033, leaving a $3.7 trillion funding gap.
The market for digital tools that manage these assets is expanding quickly. The global BIM market is valued at $9.03 billion in 2025 and projected to reach $15.42 billion by 2030 (11.3% CAGR), helped by government mandates for BIM on public infrastructure projects. Over the same period, the global digital twin market is projected to grow from $21.14 billion to $149.81 billion (at a 47.9% CAGR). Most of these tools, however, keep asset data in centralized databases controlled by a single party, and city models are often built and managed in isolation from one another.
Researchers at the University of Florida have developed a blockchain-enabled City Information Modeling (CIM) platform that gives stakeholders in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) industry a decentralized, tamper-proof, single source of truth for urban assets. By linking individual building models to a shared, city-level record, it makes asset histories verifiable, connects assets held by different owners, and gives cities and owners trusted data for maintenance, investment, and planning decisions.
Application
Secure, city-scale digital record platform that combines BIM, GIS, and blockchain so cities, infrastructure owners, and AECO firms can track, verify, and share asset data across the full lifecycle of buildings and infrastructure
Advantages
- Tamper-proof asset histories: Creating a permanent, verifiable record of asset changes, improving transparency and auditability throughout the asset lifecycle
- Decentralized data management: Reducing dependence on centralized systems, improving resilience and collaboration across project stakeholders
- City-scale asset integration: Connecting BIM and GIS data across multiple assets and owners, enabling more comprehensive urban infrastructure planning and analysis
- End-to-end lifecycle tracking: Preserving asset information from design through retirement, improving continuity and long-term decision-making
- Automated trust and verification: Using smart contracts to streamline validation processes, reducing costs and administrative overhead
- One shared source of truth: Providing consistent, up-to-date asset information to all authorized users, minimizing information gaps between project phases
- One shared source of truth: all permitted parties see the same asset data, reducing information silos and fragmentation between project phases
Technology
This CIM asset management platform links BIM metadata to a blockchain ledger through smart contracts. Asset information such as design specifications, material properties, ownership records, and maintenance history is securely recorded, verified, and updated as tamper-proof transactions throughout the asset lifecycle.
The platform uses a nested, two-level data environment that mirrors how cities are owned: many assets, many owners. At the project level, each building model is placed at its real-world location in a GIS scene, and its BIM metadata is recorded on the blockchain and shared among the project’s collaborators through a common data environment (CDE). At the city level, these project records are combined into a City Information Model and shared through an outer, city-wide CDE. This structure allows communication between projects and between assets that siloed, traditional approaches cannot support.
The smart contracts were developed in the Ethereum Remix IDE and deployed on a Ganache blockchain network, creating an immutable record of every information change and addressing industry-wide problems of data siloing and insecurity. The result is an end-to-end chain of project information that scales from individual objects to comprehensive, multi-dimensional City Information Models with high-capacity visualization.
Brochure
