Circulation analysis of design alternatives for elderly housing unit allocation using building information modelling-enabled indoor walkability index

In retrofit-purposed projects such as building renovations, the early decision-support mechanism to determine an optimistic circulation plan and spatial allocation is strongly required for architects, owners and residents. In this paper, we introduce such a case study based on the building information modelling-enabled approach that has been explored using an actual project at Yeongwol, South Korea for resolving diverse residential types, including elderly housing units. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate an actual analysis of building remodelling design alternatives regarding indoor circulation and spatial allocation problems, especially considering elderly housing units. Another significant feature of this paper is a quantitative and explicit approach to the indoor walkability index using building information modelling. After acquiring indoor circulation data, such as metric distances between rooms, number of turns, spatial depth, vertical access, or any other BIM-enabled data, an appropriate and teleological weighting function was applied to determine the indoor walkability index. The usefulness of the approach was demonstrated in this paper, based on a Yeongwol project. building information modelling-enabled data provided prompt and reliable quantitative analysis results as soon as various design alternatives appear within the given timeframe to resolve circulation and spatial allocation problems for remodelling homes for the elderly.