Health and Safety Code Compliance Checking using an Integrated Hypertext and Knowledge-Based Expert System

摘要

Several older buildings have been found to violate the building code requirements with respect to health and safety of occupants. Inrnorder to ensure compliance, building managers and inspectors require a thorough knowledge of code documents and expertise tornassess the seriousness of violations. The present study aims at developing a computer tool integrating hyperlext and knowledge-basedrnsystem techniques to facilitate code compliance checking and provide access to case studies of problem scenarios. The knowledge-basernhas been developed by extracting the relevant portions of the building code and these have been represented as rules. The case siudiesrninformation has been extracted from recent studies carried out by Public Works Canada. Typical interaction with the expert system willrnlead the user through a hierarchy of potential problems and identify the specific code requirement that is violated. Expert assistance inrnthe form of explanations, reference to similar problem scenarios and interpretations to the code will be provided to the user. Arnframework to develop such a prototype system named HASES (Health and Safety Expert System) is presented. The ultimate objective ofrnthis system is to provide field inspectors with expert assistance, reference material and report writing using IBM-PC notepad/portablerncomputers.