Establishing a Knowledge Base System (KBS) for Post-Construction Building Facility Maintenance

Tongrui Zhang^1*, Ali GhaffarianHoseini¹, Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini^2,3, Nicola Naismith¹, Attiq ur Rehman¹, Ruggiero Lovreglio⁴, Dat Doan Tien¹, Okechukwu Nwadigo¹, John Tookey¹

1. ¹Department of Built Environment Engineering, School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
2. ²Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
3. ³Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
4. ⁴Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Auckland, 20 Symonds Street, Auckland, New Zealand

Published in The Fourth NZAAR International Event Series on Natural and Built Environment, Cities, Sustainability and Advanced Engineering, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 27 January 2018, pages 43 to 48. New Zealand Academy of Applied Research. ISSN 2463-5979 (online), 2463-5960 (print). Indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, Conference Proceedings Citation Index (Clarivate).

Abstract

With the increasing need for energy efficient occupant comfort, the maintenance process becomes a key factor. Aspects including failure response time, maintenance treatment time and maintainability have a great influence on the building occupant comfort. Normally, the efficiency and effectiveness of maintenance process largely rely on the knowledge the maintenance workers have and the right notifications. However, occupants are not generally skilled in such field, and they most likely send the wrong information while failing to find the right person in charge. That will cause the longer response time. In this regards, this study intends to develop a building facility maintenance Knowledge Base (KB) more visually. Particularly, OpenGL was used to make the process of casebased reasoning directly perceived through senses. Meanwhile, using Building Information Models (BIM) simplified the process of developing a 3D Knowledge-Based System (KBS). Moreover, Microsoft Access database was set up to provide search and update functions for the KB. The efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed system was examined by this paper. However, the proposed Knowledge-Based System is limited to the complexity in facility manufacturers, protocol used and discreteness in hardware. Moreover, the operation conditions of building facilities vary in different projects. Therefore, the accuracy and volume of the KB should be further optimized. In futuristic research, more real-world buildings will be applied on to validate and improve the proposed system.

Keywords: Knowledge Base System (KBS); Building Information Models (BIM); Facility Maintenance; PostConstruction Lifecycle

Rights

Copyright © New Zealand Academy of Applied Research Ltd 2018. All rights reserved. Reproduced in the GDI Academy archive from the original proceedings without change to the authors’ text.