An ontology-based tool for safety management in building renovation projects

Managing deep renovation projects is challenging due to the interactions with their surroundings, the issues of limited access and space, and the uncertainty around the composition and conditions of existing buildings. The interplay between the building areas, the building elements involved in the deep renovation, and the renovation scenarios and activities present challenging situations for managing safety risks. Research on enhancing safety in building projects using digital approaches such as BIM has mainly focussed on new construction works, yet limited research is available for deep building renovation projects. Using a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, this paper develops an ontology for representation and identification of hazards in deep building renovations, instantiates the ontology through the development of a digital tool, and demonstrates its usefulness in hazard representation and identification by performing tests with real industry data from deep renovation projects, as part of a Horizon Europe 2020 research project, called RINNO. The testing involved a multi-residence apartment case study and three different renovation scenarios and successfully demonstrated the ability to automatically identify potential hazards relating to a particular renovation strategy. While the proposed ontology can be used to reduce the risk of accidents and injuries in building retrofit projects, its main implication is in laying the foundation for future digitally enabled approaches for managing safety in building renovation projects.