BIM and Knowledge Graph-Based Building Material Recycle and Reuse Assessment Framework

Construction waste has always been the primary source of solid waste. In the United States, more than 600 million tons of construction and demolition wastes (CD&W) are generated annually, and plenty of construction waste, including concrete, bricks, and wood, will be landfilled directly. In recent years, people gradually realized the importance of reducing construction waste and developed a variety of methods to address the problems. However, there are still millions of tons of recyclable and reusable materials thrown away during the building demolition process because there is a lack of systematic understanding of options with respect to material types, conditions, and the complex value chains of a circular materials system, which leads both the demand and supply sides to underestimate building materials’ salvaged value. The paper sets out to address the problem by proposing a general framework that focuses on constructing a knowledge graph to evaluate building materials’ potential salvage methods based on material type, usage duration, weather conditions, and local policy. Once the fundamental framework is established, the objective is to integrate the knowledge graph with BIM in order to automatically determine the condition of materials for salvage. This includes quantifying reusable and recyclable building materials and deducing their appropriate salvage methods.