Machine Learning-Enabled Fire Performance Diagnostics BIM Solution (FireBIM) for Building Design and Construction Compliance Check

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The unfortunate Grenfell fire disaster, where 72 lives were lost, has gone down as one of the UK's worst disaster of modern time. As a way of preventing future occurrence of such tragedy, one of the key recommendations of government's commissioned report (Hackett,2018) suggests the need for intelligent systems of regulation and enforcement to facilitate compliance with arrays of regulations and standards, including Approved Document B, HTM05-02, BS9999, BS9991 and BB100, among others. This is also reinforced by several studies (e.g. Noren et al.,2018; Sun,2020) which suggested integration of fire performance diagnostics with Building Information Modelling (BIM) as optimal approach for mitigating fire disasters. However, development in such areas is hindered, as regulations and standards are written in natural languages, only comprehensible by domain experts, and not usually for machines to process. This implies that compliance with vital safety standards is prone to error, subjectivity, corner-cutting, and additional time in correcting non-conformances identified through manual processes.Advances in the field of machine learning and analytics offers opportunities for automating building safety requirement compliance check, which the proposed project seeks to implement. The project aims to create an intelligent innovative system (FireBIM), as BIM-based solution, consisting of two key elements as follows:Platform 1--Design Diagnostics Platform for Fire Performance Compliance (BIMFire-Diagnostics): This platform evaluates building design for compliance with fire safety standards and regulation, including Approved Document B, HTM 05-02, BS 9999, BS 9991 and BB100, by:(i)Automatically diagnosing proposed/as-built designs for compliance with provisions of targeted regulations/standards.(ii)Identifying areas of non-conformances with regulations and standards.(iii)Highlighting uncertified/unwarranted/uninsured areas, requiring detailing for approval.(iv)Suggesting improved and optimal design solutions.Platform 2--Materials and Components Decision Support for Fire Performance (BIMFire-DSS): Based on the requirements of building regulations and standards, up-to-date information from the industry and suppliers' information, this platform will provide decision supports for designers, contractors and building inspectors by:(i)Highlighting fire rating requirements for building elements.(ii)Digitising plethora of valid solutions for attaining compliance.(iii)Suggesting specific materials/detailing/specification for meeting performance standards.(iv)Flagging up materials/components/design solutions when unsafe for purpose.(v)Developing database of tested and certified materials/components.The project employs machine learning to train intelligent model that will identify and predict building regulations infringements/non-conformances in building designs. Text mining will be implemented to translate standards/regulation documents into machine-understandable formats, with automated reasoning and inference mechanism applied to the machine processable information for automated compliance diagnostics.