BIM and Fire Safety Engineering – Overview of State of The Art

Abstract

Fire safety engineering is a critical specialization to include in the design of a tall building yet is often excluded from the Building Information Model (BIM) and integrated design process. The design of fire safety systems is interdependent with building/structural geometry, HVAC, mechanical, and electrical systems. A BIM is a 3D visual representation that stores data on these kinds of systems. The compatibility between BIM and fire safety design seems obvious yet has received a dearth of attention in structural (fire) engineering literature. The authors herein have reviewed over 40 recent papers on utilizing BIM for fire safety engineering, focusing on contemporary literature to obtain a more up-to-date review of the state-of-the-art. The resulting trends, technologies, research gaps, and methodologies are presented in this paper. Adoption of BIM in fire safety engineering is slow and behind other disciplines which may be improved if research involved more industry partners. For BIM technology to reach its potential, industry manufacturers need to provide high LOD fire BIM objects, fire engineers and researchers need to collaborate on future advancements, and building owners/management need to be educated on how to use the benefits provided.