BIM for Resilience: Automating Designs to Retrofit Informal Housing

As a result of population growth in developing countries, informal housing has increased significantly. This affects a series of large-scale issues, such as access to water, electricity, and especially a safe environment. In addition, materials and construction practices used in the construction of informal settlements are not always adequate, leading to unsafe structures that are extremely vulnerable to disasters. Among the possible solutions to this global issue, the more sustainable one is the retrofitting of existing buildings to increase disaster resistance. However, considering the magnitude of potentially dangerous houses, the only cost- and time-efficient method to retrofit would be automation. With this in mind, Build Change has designed a workflow based on BIM (Building Information Modeling) tools that reduces data-collection and design time from days to hours. In this class, we’ll describe the strategies used to automate structural designs using Dynamo in a BIM-oriented environment.