BIM-enabled semantic web for automated safety checks in subway construction

Rule-based construction safety checking aims to inspect safety risk factors during the construction process to ensure that risk factor states are within safety thresholds. However, integrating multisource safety risk factors and text-based rules remains a challenge. This study proposes a semantic approach to integrate heterogeneous data under a building information modeling (BIM) environment and enable automated safety checking through SPARQL-based reasoning. In this framework, four interconnected ontologies are developed to provide a semantic schema for subway construction safety checking. Safety risk factors data are extracted from BIM and sensor data and then converted into integrated ontology instances. Text-based rules are automatically transformed into SPARQL-based checking rules. The proposed framework can improve knowledge sharing and promote real-time and automated safety checking. A case is illustrated to show how the framework can be applied, confirming the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed framework.