Chairs

Architectural informatics is an independent field of teaching and research at university-level architec-ture faculties and concerns the scientific foundation for information processing and information tech-nology in all areas that architects work in. Links to other fields of knowledge and subject areas are an essential aspect, for example the relationship to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to building informatics, structural and construction engineering, CNC manufacturing as well as specific areas of computational informatics. The aim of the Chair for Architectural Informatics is to utilize information technology and computers in a continuous, open and extensible way for the many different application areas and working processes in architecture. As part of this the chair strives to strengthen collaboration between practicing architects, building contractors, software houses and related academic and scientific fields.

The Chair for Architectural Informatics sees itself as a field where departments and institutes within the Faculty of Architecture as well as other faculties of the TUM intersect, for example through jointly conducted courses and project work as well as involvement in other study programs at the TUM (Games Engineering, for example) and through tutoring of students in interdisciplinary projects (IDPs). The chair also serves a connecting function in its research work, for example in its joint projects with the Leibniz Rechenzentrum and the TUM University Library as well as in collaborative projects and research work with external partners from research, industry and enterprise.

In teaching and research, the architecture faculties are influenced by how the potential of information technology is exploited in architecture and related scientific disciplines. In addition to the interdisciplinary approach followed at the Chair for Architectural Informatics, practice-oriented research and research-related teaching contribute to the way in which research and teaching inform one another. For example, in the master’s study program, students are directly involved in current research activities and can work on specific aspects of current research activities.

The Chair of Construction Process Management researches and teaches in close cooperation with organizational science and management in the construction industry. In this context, it deals with technical, economic as well as legal aspects of planning phases up to building permit, construction and acceptance.

The Chair of Computational Modeling and Simulation is part of both the Department of Civil Engineering and Geodesy and the Munich School of Engineering. The teaching and research focus lies on computer-based development of engineering products, in particular on the planning and realization of constructions using computational modeling and simulation tools.

The current research work ranges from establishing Building Information Modeling methods over the spatial analysis of 3D engineering models and the computer-supported life-cycle management of buildings to the simulation of construction processes and pedestrian dynamics. In all our projects we are closely collaborating with industry partners and scientists from other research disciplines.

The Chair of Geoinformatics at TUM is a main driver in the development of methods and models for 3D geoinformation. It has great experience and tradition in OGC standardization. Thomas H. Kolbe is head of the chair of Geoinformatics and full professor. He has also been director of the Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science and Chair of Methods of Geoinformation at Berlin University of Technology. Kolbe is the initiator and one of the principal architects of CityGML.

The Chair of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing at TUM is well known for research on models, algorithms, and methodologies for mapping, analyzing, and fusing data from urban areas.

Developed approaches address the processing chain ranging from signal processing and precise pose estimation by imaging sensors to surface reconstruction and change detection to semantic modeling for automated interpretation. The data considered are recorded by passive sensors operating in the visible or in the thermal infrared domain and active sensors systems like LiDAR or synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The level of detail mapped by the sensors vary depending on the used platform operating spaceborne (satellites), airborne (aircrafts, helicopters, UAVs) or terrestrial (mobile mapping systems). Application examples regarding urban areas consider on one side the buildings (e.g. building reconstruction from LiDAR or SAR, texturing of building models using thermal infrared image sequences, enrichment of data bases by facade interpretation, change detection of urban structures) and on the other side the traffic (e.g. detection of vehicles from visible and infrared image sequences, from dense laser point clouds or from ultra-high resolution SAR imagery).

Beside the mentioned applications focused on urban areas some projects extend the working space in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Application examples are coming from forestry and glaciology or close range domain addressing e.g. pose estimation of robots for photogrammetric surface reconstruction (automotive industry) or patient positioning for image guided therapy (medical application).