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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-323-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Query2Property: Semantic retrieval of IFC properties for natural language BIM queries</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lamsal</surname>
<given-names>Rabindra</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2182-3001</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zlatanova</surname>
<given-names>Sisi</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8766-0487</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>GRID Lab, School of Built Environment, UNSW Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>10</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-4-2026</volume>
<fpage>323</fpage>
<lpage>330</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Rabindra Lamsal</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/323/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-323-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/323/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-323-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/323/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-323-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/323/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-323-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>IFC models store detailed building information, but their complex schema and deeply nested property sets make querying difficult for non-expert users and challenging for large language models (LLMs) to handle directly. Current LLM-based approaches are inefficient because prompts often include entire IFC schemas, many properties of which are irrelevant to the user&amp;rsquo;s query, leading to higher inference costs and potential errors. This paper presents &lt;em&gt;Query2Property&lt;/em&gt;, a semantic retrieval system that maps natural language queries to the most relevant IFC properties. By embedding both property descriptions and user queries in a shared vector space, the system retrieves contextually relevant properties for dynamic and concise prompt construction in LLM-driven workflows. Evaluation on 55 representative BIM queries achieves a top-1 accuracy of 87.3% and top-3 accuracy of 100%, demonstrating effective alignment with user intent. Query2Property simplifies LLM-based workflows over BIM data, supporting semantic search and natural language exploration of complex building information.</p>
</abstract>
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