The capability to accurately detect changes between successive versions of the IFC representation of a BIM
model would enable the development of generic change management functionalities for construction projects.
Unfortunately, IFC models consist mostly of anonymous objects without stable identities; therefore the
computation of differences between versions is complicated. When IFC models are converted into an RDF
representation, the uniform graph structure offers new algorithmic opportunities. We study how to assign
unique and stable identities to anonymous nodes based on signatures generated from their graph environment,
and present the Short Paths Crossings Algorithm (SPCA) that computes sets of paths with limited length from
anonymous nodes taking into account their crossings. Empirical tests show that SPCA produces significantly
smaller difference sets for IFC-derived graphs than previous algorithms for RDF change detection.
