Sharing building information using the IFC data model for FDS fire simulation

Abstract

This paper describes part of a research project that looks into the potential and challenge of using the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) open standard building information model in fire engineering design. In particular the paper describes work undertaken to share building geometry and other information with the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) fire simulation model. A commercially available building information modeling (BIM) authoring application has been used to create building geometries and export IFC data files. A web-based conversion tool has been created to generate FDS input data given the output from a dedicated fire engineering IFC parser tool. The capabilities and outcome of data sharing process is illustrated in this paper using a simple test case building.