The Digital Transformation in Fire Safety Engineering over the Past Decade Through Building Information Modelling: A Review

Building information modelling (BIM) is widely considered to be leading the digital transformation of the AEC industry because of its data management capabilities among different stakeholders and across the building life-cycle. Fire safety engineering (FSE) is one of the disciplines that has been excluded for a long time from integrated approaches such as BIM, even though ensuring fire safety is a fundamental aspect of building performance. This paper presents a systematic literature review of BIM–FSE integration methodologies to highlight its potentialities for building life-cycle management and the digital transformation of the AEC domain. The findings show that the majority of BIM–FSE applications are focused on fire and evacuation simulations, followed by detection, monitoring and real-time emergency management. Technologies that are often involved in BIM-based fire safety solutions are CFD-based technologies, game- augmented and virtual reality, and the internet of things. Native formats are the most used for data sharing, while open standards still lack adequate data structures for FSE applications. The review highlights the benefits, embedded potentialities and limitations of the BIM–FSE integration in a decade of research studies. Future research directions for the digital transformation of FSE through BIM are proposed in a research agenda.