Preventing COVID-19 spread in school buildings using Building Information Modelling: a case study

During the last years, many studies focused on automated processes for compliance checking intended to replace the current design verification practices. So far, the verification of projects in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operation industry has largely consisted of manual processes, which result in laborious, costly, and error-prone. The compliance checking process addresses the project’s whole life cycle, from the design phase to the end of life. Previous researches show the applications of a Building Information Model Checking referring to the compliance with several national and international normative to meet standards requirements. This paper proposes an innovative approach to evaluate the compliance of school buildings with the measures to prevent and control the spread of Coronavirus, one of the most significant pandemics. A case study is then presented to validate the method. The school building is modelled using Revit software. Dynamo is employed as a visual scripting tool to customize the mathematical formulations of each safety rule from different standards for COVID-19 prevention. Revit and Dynamo are coupled to conduct the compliance checking. The methodology herein proposed allows for verifying the school environments showing their compliance with safety standards. Although the World is coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, this approach could be used to face other waves or different types of pandemics.