Regulatory Knowledge Encoding Guidelines for Automated Compliance Audit of Building Engineering Design (original) (raw)
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Computerizing Regulatory Knowledge for Building Engineering Design
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 2016
Two common challenges in the computer-aided compliance audit of building engineering designs are being addressed in the current research. The first is to ensure that any form of computable representation is practical and relatively easy to use and maintain. The second is to ensure that performance-based regulatory compliance criteria, which are often qualitative in nature, are adequately addressed and correctly represented. This research proposes a method of automating manual compliant design procedures using an open standard executable workflow representation that can be specified and maintained relatively easily by a design engineer. This executable workflow is referred to as the Compliant Design Procedure (CDP) and can be described graphically using a subset of the open standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). When executed in a computing environment, a CDP can guide the compliance audit process by checking a given design represented in a model view or subset of the BIM model, referred to as the Building Compliance Model (BCM), against the criteria in a digital building code, referred to as the Regulatory Knowledge Model (RKM), which is developed specifically for this purpose. This paper describes the process of modelling and encoding BCM, CDP and RKM, which are independent input components of the proposed compliance audit system framework. Supplementary human input and the ability to exchange input and output data with external simulation tools to solve some of the more complex qualitative criteria are important features of the framework.
Querying a Regulatory Model for Compliant Building Design Audit
The ingredients for an effective automated audit of a building design include a BIM model containing the design information, an electronic regulatory knowledge model, and a practical method of processing these computerised representations. There have been numerous approaches to computeraided compliance audit in the AEC/FM domain over the last four decades, but none has yet evolved into a practical solution. One reason is that they have all been isolated attempts that lack any form of standardisation. The current research project therefore focuses on using an open standard regulatory knowledge and BIM representations in conjunction with open standard executable compliant design workflows to automate the compliance audit process. This paper provides an overview of different approaches to access information from a regulatory model representation. The paper then describes the use of a purpose-built high-level domain specific query language to extract regulatory information as part of the effort to automate manual design procedures for compliance audit.
REGULATORY KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION FOR AUTOMATED COMPLIANCE AUDIT OF BIM-BASED MODELS
There has been significant research in the area of automated and semi-automated regulatory compliance checking in the AEC domain over the past four decades. In order to computerise the regulatory compliance checking process, we first need to have computer representations of both the building model and the regulations. We now have Building Information Modelling (BIM) as the industry standard representation for buildings, but the challenge remains to find an efficient and practical digital representation of the regulatory knowledge. One common approach to represent regulatory knowledge for architectural and building engineering designs is to extract rules from the regulatory texts, which has proven to be quite challenging to automate. However, a popular technique used in Business Process Management (BPM) could be adapted to facilitate the representation of regulatory knowledge in the AEC domain. Additionally, the legal domain has come up with some initiatives to provide a means to sha...
Automated compliance checking using building information models
Building designs in the UK are currently checked manually against a frequently changing and increasingly complex set of building regulations. This is a major task for both designers and enforcers, often leading to ambiguity, inconsistency in assessments and delays in the overall construction process. Technical developments in Building Information Modelling (BIM) offer the potential for a new generation of software tools that can automate the checking of compliance with building codes, thus improving the efficiency of building design and procurement. To attain these efficiencies designers must change their working practices and move away from the definition of a building in multiple and disparate documents to a single coherent building model from which the documentation is generated. Theoretically, this building model could contain sufficient information to respond to interrogation at the level of building code compliance, though in practice only a percentage of the required informat...
Integrating the BIM Rule Language into Compliant Design Audit Processes
2016
Extracting the right information from Building Information Models (BIM) and Regulatory Knowledge Models (RKM) is a core activity in computer-aided compliance audit processes. Despite many research attempts, however, this has remained a challenging task. One reason is that BIM is necessarily a highly complex model. Representing all components of such a complex object as a building is a huge challenge. Equally complex is accessing existing regulatory knowledge from voluminous paper-based documents conveyed in natural language and not readily suitable for computer processing. Most regulatory knowledge can be represented as rules, but there are some that cannot be pre-defined and require human intervention and/or supplementary processes. This paper describes how BIMRL can be integrated into a computer-aided compliance audit framework and used as a companion, or an alternative, to RKQL to better facilitate information gathering in the execution of CDP workflows The study is based on two ...
Automated Building Code Compliance Checking - Where is it at?
There has been an extensive amount of research conducted internationally over the last four decades in the area of automated and semi-automated regulatory compliance checking for the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. This paper summarises the earlier research initiatives, explores common themes and different approaches used, as well as comparing the strengths and limitations of a number of major code compliance checking tools. Some of these tools have been implemented commercially and others are beginning to be adopted or are in their final stages of development. The paper also examines how readily these tools can be applied in the context of a performance-based code as found in New Zealand.
2020
The implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry has significantly amplified the responsibility of designers in creating reliable and accurate BIM models. Fundamentally, the BIM models must comply with the fire safety regulations to provide minimum protection for building occupants and property. Since fire safety regulations are known to be complex and rigid, the manual compliance checking process could lead to inaccuracies, especially in a BIM-based environment. Hence, this study developed an automated BIM-based fire regulations compliance checking system for Malaysian's AEC industry. In order to establish the rules and BIM properties necessary for fire regulations compliance checking process, 256 clauses from Parts VII and VIII of Selangor Uniform Building (Amendment) (No. 2) By-Laws 2012 were selected to create a BIM model using Revit® based on two-dimensional drawings of a completed 17-storey institutional building. Three investigations were conducted to structure the representation of the rules and BIM properties. First, the fire safety clauses were formalised through a classification technique, semantic markup requirement, applicability, selection, exception (RASE) methodology, and interviewing two fire engineers and a representative from the Fire and Rescue Department Malaysia (JBPM). Secondly, the BIM properties consisting of 54 families and their respective parameters in Revit® were identified for the compliance checking process. Lastly, pseudocodes and architecture of the automated system were developed to establish the relationship between the formalised clauses and BIM properties. Dynamo® scripts were used to develop a prototype of an automated fire regulations compliance checking system which could automatically check for fire doors and staircases in Revit®. The representative from JBPM, three fire engineers and architect validated the proposed architecture while the prototype was validated by three architects, two structural engineers, one mechanical engineer, and two civil engineers. This study contributed to a semi-automated rule translation process which combined existing approaches in this field of study. The classification technique and semantic markup RASE methodology were refined in this research by developing flowcharts to provide specific guidelines in formalising the clauses. The semi-automated rule translation process encouraged the participation of relevant fire safety experts and provided more accessibility for designers compared to existing studies. This study also offered more practicality for designers to employ the system by utilising native BIM model data representation. High mean scores ranging from 4.00 to 4.96 were obtained for the validation process, which affirmed the feasibility of an automated BIM-based fire regulations compliance checking system to assist designers in the Malaysian AEC industry.
Incorporating Building Regulations into Design Systems: An Object Oriented Approach
The knowledge of regulations governing the construction of buildings needs to be included in CAD systems if building designers are to use cornputen effectively in the design process. At present, building regulations only implicitly contain models of buildings. These models need to be made explicit for incorporation within intelligent design systems. This paper outlines one way to explicitly incorporate these building rehmnce models using an object-orientedparadigm. The goal is to develop systems that incorporate both geometric and nongeometric (technical and administrative) information about the design process in order to aid the designer in his task. In order to provide a flexible system, it is proposed that the building reference model (objects in the design and the relationships betwen the objects) be separated from the technical requirements or constraints prescribed by the regulation.
Modelling and accessing regulatory knowledge for computer-assisted compliance audit
2016
The ingredients for an effective automated audit of a building design include a building model containing the design information, a computerised regulatory knowledge model, and a practical method of processing these computable representations. There have been numerous approaches to computer-aided compliance audit in the AEC/FM domain over the last four decades, but none has yet evolved into a practical solution. One reason is that they have all been isolated attempts that lack any form of industry-wide standardisation. The current research project, therefore, focuses on investigating the use of the industry standard building information model and the adoption of open standard legal knowledge interchange and executable workflow models for automating conventional compliant design processes. This paper provides a non-exhaustive overview of common approaches to model and access regulatory knowledge for a compliance audit. The strengths and weaknesses of two comparative open standard kno...