Applying building information modeling to support fire safety management

Building information modeling (BIM) is useful in three-dimensional (3D) visualization and data/information storage for planning and maintaining building projects. Recently, researchers globally have been exploring the applications of BIM. In this work, a BIM-based model is designed to support fire safety management of buildings. The model comprises four modules - evacuation assessment, escape route planning, safety education, and equipment maintenance. The evacuation assessment module integrates BIM with a Fire Dynamics Simulator to calculate the required safety egress time and the available safety egress time to evaluate the ability to evacuate in case of fire. The escape route planning module utilizes BIM to determine whether the distance of an escape route is acceptable. The safety education module presents hazardous areas, videos of escape routes and directional maps, all in three dimensions, to educate the occupants of the building about fire safety. The equipment maintenance module is implemented in a web-based prototype to support maintenance tasks in a remote management manner. The results of applying BIM have demonstrated that BIM can effectively provide 3D geometric data to support the assessment and planning of fire safety (using the first three modules), and it can store information in support of safety management and property management in a web-based environment (using the equipment maintenance module).