City information modelling (CIM) for urban management: feedback on the first phase of a district CIM implementation

More and more models, whatever their scale (building, public space, district, city), are used in planning processes and are considered as tools to promote project sustainability and collaboration among actors. Often enriched with semantic information, they carry different names and are technically very heterogeneous. In this article, we explore the scientific literature strongly developing around the City Information Model (CIM) concept and confront it with a feedback on a CIM approach deployed on a concerted development zone (ZAC). Our investigation is performed in collaboration with stakeholders and in the early phases of the ZAC, in order to explore the possible uses of the CIM of the project at the urban scale. The interviews focused on the technical and governance aspects of these models and on the exchanges between actors. We highlight the gap between the discussions on CIM and their implementation in a project involving many contributors. We therefore point out the complexity of the CIM definition, the necessity to precisely describe CIM uses and the operational difficulties of collaboration among actors. We identify research areas to be investigated so as to consolidate the theoretical and practical knowledge of digital urban models, such as empirical data collection and the needs of involved actors.