What We Do – Technology and AI
Build Change recognizes that the right engineering and construction technology must be locally available, widely known, and cost-competitive. Digital technology can be leveraged to create huge efficiencies that support scaling resilient housing and schools.
Build Change has been using artificial intelligence in our climate-resilient housing work for years: to rapidly determine if a house can be strengthened, to make construction inspection more efficient, to help predict earthquake and windstorm damage on housing stock so that governments and development banks are motivated to take action, and more.
Continue reading below to find out how we can help you drive the supply of and demand for resilient housing and schools through four pathways:
- Digital tools for scale
- Artificial intelligence for resilient housing
- Improving codes, design, & construction
- Capacity building, workforce development and job creation
Build Change is actively seeking partners who want to apply technology and artificial intelligence to provide practical solutions that advance disaster resilience. Join us!
Digital tech platforms
By using digital technologies, we are able to make more homes safer at a faster rate.
- Using geospatial data for rapid assessments
- Capturing and sharing assessment data
- Developing apps for homeowner awareness
- Automating design steps through building information modeling (BIM) and artificial intelligence (AI)
- Digital tools for construction monitoring
- Implementing an end-to-end MIS across the 6-step construction value chain
Digital technology is continuing to transform the scope of what is possible for resilient housing programs and add efficiencies to each stage of the six-step construction value chain:
Purpose-driven partnerships with Autodesk, CISCO, IBM, and Microsoft have advanced solutions for millions of people living in vulnerable housing today.
The Build Change technical assistance platform, BCtap, is an end-to-end solution that pairs technology with subject matter expertise to take resilient housing programs to scale.
The simple Digital Home Strengthening Tool in BCtap can be applied to efficiently scale access to financing and technical assistance for incremental improvements in housing resilience.
ISAC-SIMO, your Intelligent Supervision Assistant for Construction, packs important construction quality assurance checks into a convenient mobile app.
The tool harnesses the power of machine learning and image processing to provide feedback on specific construction elements such as masonry walls and reinforced concrete columns.
ISAC-SIMO is open source.
Artificial Intelligence for Resilient Housing
Three ways Build Change is harnessing AI for good
- To rapidly determine if a house is a candidate for retrofitting
By crowdsourcing photos and using machine learning to screen for go/no-go, we reduce time and cost for field visits.
This Build Change initiative came in runner up for this initiative in IBM’s inaugural Call for Code program in 2018. While this initial project was focused on earthquake resilience, the approach can be applied to climate resilience as well.
- To make construction quality inspections more efficient and automated
We developed ISAC-SIMO, Intelligent Supervision Assistant for Construction, and trained its AI to recognize the difference between good-quality brickwork and bad, good-quality steel reinforcement and bad, and more. Build Change is proud that this tool is now universally available as an open source platform.
- To help predict earthquake and hurricane damage to housing
The predictive power of AI has the potential to motivate the financing and political will to adapt homes and schools to climate change and extreme weather. Build Change has ground-truthed a model the World Bank was using to predict damage to housing stock in St. Lucia and have made suggestions to continue to improve their algorithm.
Dr. Elizabeth Hausler speaks on a panel on AI and Human Rights at the 2019 Skoll World Forum
Engineering, Design & Construction
Pioneering safer housing through better design & construction
Build Change is home to some of the world’s foremost authorities on seismic and disaster-resilient engineering. Our team excels at providing engineering and capacity-building excellence in the assessment, design, construction, and retrofitting of low-rise buildings in challenging post-disaster and vulnerable environments. Core to our success is a history of championing women to thrive as leaders of reconstruction and as engineers within our organization.
Training, Creating Jobs and Workforce Development
Capacity building for sustainable change
Anyone can learn the fundamentals of disaster-resistant building construction. Engineers, builders, government officials, homeowners, vocational students, and building materials producers have all been participants in training on the design and construction principles of safe buildings. By reaching all of the various people involved, we ensure that structures are built to be safer. Training improves local knowledge and skills for building safer homes and schools in accordance with government standards and generally accepted principles of disaster-resistant construction.
Key to the technology category of our theory of change is workforce development and job creation. We prioritize training local builders and materials suppliers to deliver code-compliant construction according to the requirements of each program. To enable a larger portion of the workforce to meet qualifications, we provide opportunities for construction worker capacity building. Through partnerships with public and private programs and schools to provide training, licensing, and certification, we promote and encourage these learning opportunities.
What We Do
People
Drive and incentivize homeowner demand for resilient housing- Learn more
Policy
Elevating disaster-resilient housing on global, national, and local agendas- Learn more
Money
Expand funding and lending for construction, operations, and systems change- Learn more
Technology
Technology continues to transform the scope of what is possible- Learn more
Support resilient housing worldwide
Join us in preventing housing loss caused by disasters and climate-induced events.
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