Abstract
Commercial and public buildings are more vulnerable to fires because of their complex use functions, large number of centralized occupants, and the dynamic nature of the use of space. Due to the large number of these types of buildings and the limited availability of manpower, annual fire inspections cannot ensure the continuous compliance of fire codes. A crowdsourcing application, iInspect, is proposed in this paper to harvest collective intelligence in order to conduct mass inspection tasks. This approach is supported by building information modeling (BIM) based virtual reality (VR) and an indoor real-time localization system. Based on the International Fire Code and 27 fire inspection checklists compiled by various local authorities, a generic list of inspection items suitable for iInspect is proposed, along with a reputation-based monetary incentive model. A prototype of iInspect was created for Android mobile phones, and a case study was performed in an office building in Tianjin, China, for verification of this crowdsourcing inspection approach.
Highlights
As a major cause of injury and death across the world, fire is an important hazard that deserves special attention in risk management for buildings
Commercial and public buildings are deemed to be more vulnerable to fires because of their complex use functions, large number of centralized building occupants, and the dynamic nature of the use of these buildings
There needs to be an approach to track the status of all fire safety-related facilities in a real-time manner, or at the very least to conduct safety inspections on a more frequent basis
Summary
As a major cause of injury and death across the world, fire is an important hazard that deserves special attention in risk management for buildings. China over the last two decades [2], one can find that most of the severe fires that resulted in a large number of casualties occurred in commercial or public buildings. The intensive use of land in urban areas has greatly increased the prevalence of large-scale buildings, mainly complex commercial buildings such as shopping malls as well as public buildings such as hospitals. These types of buildings are deemed to have a higher risk of fire. A large commercial complex has multiple business types such as shops, restaurants, and cinemas. It is not easy to track and manage the storage of flammable goods in shops
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