Capabilities of rule representations for automated compliance checking in healthcare buildings

Abstract

A suitable rule representation is essential to enable automated compliance checking of building design. It encapsulates engineering knowledge and facilitates an adequate interpretation of design standards. However, existing methods have achieved limited capabilities to represent rules for automated compliance checking. Thus, they merely worked for limited types of rules. This paper aims to identify capabilities needed for rule representation by using healthcare design regulations as an example. It can serve as a foundation for developing rule engines and compliance-checking systems in the future. A four-step process was used to systematically analyse six healthcare building regulations in rule-oriented and implementation aspects. The results showed 18 capabilities for healthcare rule representation, where 16 are required, and two are desirable. This research is valuable to researchers and practitioners by providing a checklist for future representation development and criteria for assessing rule representation methods.