Framework of BIM-Based Quantitative Evaluation for Enhancing Fire Safety Performance of Buildings

Abstract

The significance of fire inspection has been underscored to prevent building fires, which can lead to property damage and loss of life. While previous studies employed building information modeling (BIM) to evaluate fire safety performance, they primarily focused on a building’s physical characteristics, overlooking environmental factors. To address this limitation, we propose a framework of BIM-based quantitative evaluation, which incorporates both physical and environmental characteristics of buildings to enhance their fire safety performance. We conducted a case study featuring three scenarios to validate the proposed framework. The results demonstrate that Scenario 3, with a score of 60.3 points, outperforms Scenarios 1 (30.9 points) and 2 (38.2 points) in terms of fire safety performance. This is attributed to Scenario 3’s consideration of components, firefighting equipment, and environmental elements in preventing and responding to building fires. The proposed framework contributes to the field by automatically evaluating buildings’ fire safety performance using a comprehensive approach based on BIM.