Formalized Representation for Supporting Automated Identification of Critical Assets in Facilities during Emergencies Triggered by Failures in Building Systems

This paper presents a formalized vulnerability representation schema that targets supporting vulnerability assessment in a facility during an emergency triggered by a failure in a building system by identifying which critical assets might be affected by the current emergency. The representation schema captures to which threats specific content are vulnerable. Specifically, it enables the representation of threats and how they can be traced spatially. Moreover, it provides a way to describe content by its type, its exchange and use values as a way to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities, and to represent different types of content collections. Such a representation schema is needed for supporting automated vulnerability assessment in building emergencies. The formalized representation schema was tested for coverage in synthetic tests using OmniClass for content and the Emergency Response Guidebook for threats. For content, 84% of 245 content types in OmniClass were successfully represented using the schema. These 245 content types represent the content commonly included in facility asset management databases. For threats, 79% of threats were successfully represented using the schema. The schema was also tested for extensibility in user tests, in which 99% of content types and 83% of threats cited by users were successfully represented using the schema.