4.1 The Silent Scream of Buildings, and the Cost of Ignoring it
In Part 3 we exposed the danger of silence by design. Here, we face its human cost and the path to recovery.
In an emergency, missing building data doesn’t just slow response; it puts everyone at risk. Visibility disappears. Context collapses. And in many cases, life-saving options are cut off entirely.
This article is about returning to first principles: ensuring buildings can talk when it matters most and honoring civil rights through systems that actually work. We already have the technology; what’s missing is the will to use it when it matters most.
Champlain Towers South collapse, Surfside, Florida (2021)
A stark reminder of what happens when warning signs are ignored, data is siloed, and accountability is deferred. Image Source: Wikimedia
Beneath the surface, this is also a failure of governance, of asset management in its most fundamental sense.
For decades, we’ve treated buildings as projects, not as enduring systems of accountability.
The international ISO 55000 framework defines asset management as the coordinated activity to realize value from assets.
When that coordination breaks down, when data is fragmented, ownership is unclear, and accountability disappears, value turns into vulnerability.
Each ungoverned asset becomes a liability, and every missing connection erodes resilience.
No one seems to have said this yet, so I will.
The Americans with Disabilities Act should apply to information access in buildings and cities.
Kimon Onuma, FAIA
Image Source: Dmitrii Filatov edited
ADA was passed in 1990; it’s one of the most transformative laws for accessibility. It prohibits discrimination based on disability and mandates access to public spaces, services, and programs. And it works, not because of centralized enforcement, but because it empowers citizens to demand compliance, and when necessary, take owners to court.
- Ramps, elevators, curb cuts, automatic doors, and accessible signage became standard, not because of funding, but because the courts made them unavoidable.
- Millions of Americans, previously excluded from physical spaces, were now able to attend school, work, shop, travel, and participate fully in public life.
The ADA reshaped architecture, city planning, and facility management, but one thing it didn’t (because it couldn’t yet imagine it) was how to access that data – in emergencies.
And yet today, digital silence can be just as dangerous as a locked door.
Consider this: 27% of adults in the U.S. live with a recognized disability, according to the CDC. That includes mobility, cognitive, sensory, and behavioral impairments. These individuals are already at greater risk in emergencies.
In a fire, flood, or disaster, everyone becomes functionally disabled: smoke obscures exits, panic clouds judgment, power fails, and signage becomes unreadable. And critically, the very people trained to save lives, emergency responders, go in blind, without access to current floor plans, hazard zones, or occupant data.
During a fire, responders are disabled not by accident, but by design.
This is not a one-time failure. It’s a systemic flaw that repeats almost daily in nearly every building portfolio.
If hospitals think in terms of patient health, buildings must be thought of the same way. Currently, our infrastructure is sick. The vital signs are bad: data is blocked, circulation is poor, and diagnostics are missing. In a crisis, that sickness becomes fatal.
When data is missing, both humans and AI hallucinate, guessing, assuming, and making decisions without proper grounding. If we expect AI to play a role in hospitals, cities, or first-response settings, we must first address the hallucinations we’ve built into our buildings.
The ADA must now extend into the digital age, not just to address physical barriers, but to ensure life-saving data is accessible when it matters most.
“Going in blind.”
Firefighters still go in blind, without floor plans, maps, data, or a clear understanding of the time. Why are we still designing silence into emergencies? Image Source: Wikimedia
4.2 The Failing Pulse of Infrastructure
For decades, I’ve worked with owners, architects, technologists, and policymakers to modernize the way buildings speak, not only in design, but in operations and emergencies.
We’ve had the tools: BIM, GIS, sensors, dashboards, digital twins.
We’ve had the standards: openBIM, COBie, ISO, and IFC.
We’ve had the examples: pilot projects, funded research, and award-winning case studies.
And yet the industry remains stuck.
Owners still accept closed handovers.
Architects still design without considering data longevity.
Vendors still build walled gardens.
Responders still go in blind.
Every building goes through a detailed government design and safety review process. Fire, accessibility, and systems plans are checked and approved by code officials before occupancy. Then those plans vanish to inaccessible electronic files.
The approved drawings, the intelligence that guided construction, are archived and never seen by the people who need them most: facility teams, emergency responders, on-site crisis teams, and security. What begins as rigorous oversight ends as inaccessible paperwork.
Technology helped with neatly packaging information into PDFs. That just created another threat. PDFs replaced binders. Those PDFs may have gone into cloud filing cabinets, where the building data got stored, then forgotten. That process was high-tech a decade ago, but useless. With technology, real-time access to information is available. Planning and fire departments need to mandate that data be accessible at all times, just as an EXIT sign needs to be illuminated in a theater at all times.
Image Source: Wesley Tingey
“People think we have access to building information when we roll up to a fire, but we don’t. We have almost nothing, no floor plans, no hazard maps, no real-time data. We’re going in blind, and it puts everyone at risk.” – Fire Chief Victor Esch
For years, we assumed that logic and collaboration would resolve this issue. They haven’t.
What changed sidewalks, elevators, and signage? The ADA.
What made building owners take accessibility seriously? Legal risk and moral clarity.
The ADA offers both, not to punish but to protect; not to litigate, but to reframe what’s at stake.
If a building is silent during a crisis, it’s inaccessible.
If there is loss of life because data was withheld, that’s discrimination.
The ADA needs to include access to digital life-safety infrastructure because when lives are on the line, silence kills.
And if the ADA isn’t the right regulatory vehicle, then let’s make one that is, with the same moral clarity and force.
Architects have spent centuries giving buildings form but not memory.
As Chikara Inamura of CO Architects and I discussed in our Café Zai conversation:
“When a building is completed, all the knowledge and intelligence that shaped it goes silent. The soul of the building is there, but it can’t speak. It is a silent scream.”
That silence, the industry’s acceptance of amnesia as normal, is costing lives.
Each disaster exposes a similar pattern. Buildings can store intelligence. Currently, building information is not accessible. Firefighters, inspectors, and occupants often operate blindly because access to information has never been treated as a life-safety function.
4.3 Owner notice: contractual liability for material knowledge
If your contracts don’t require validated, accessible data, you’re taking delivery of materials without the material knowledge needed for life safety and operations. The gap is predictable: paper-era specs, page-check workflows, and siloed systems. Unawareness is not a defense. Treat data accessibility as ADA for building knowledge.
Contract the fix
- Scope: Minimum-viable twin, current floor plans, egress, shutoffs, hazards, system inventory, contacts, asset data.
- Acceptance: Prove external read access on an incident network before substantial completion.
Maintenance: Define update cadence, accountable owner of record, and remedies for non-conformance.
4.4 When the Silence Turns Deadly
Similar patterns around the world.
Image Source: Wikimedia + ONUMA
The 2017 Grenfell Tower fire killed 72 people in London. The residential tower was renovated using flammable cladding materials. Years of documented safety warnings were ignored. When firefighters responded to the emergency, they entered the building blind, armed only with outdated paper plans and radio calls. They struggled to navigate a structure literally burning from within. The official inquiry later concluded that the lack of accessible, accurate building information “seriously hampered the response.” The technology was available at the time, but not utilized.
The Champlain Towers South collapse in Miami exposed a different kind of silence, not from fire, but from decades of deferred maintenance, fragmented records, and ignored engineering data. Ninety-eight people died when the building finally gave way in 2021, even though the warnings were there, buried in reports no one could access.
In January 2025, two devastating wildfires swept across Los Angeles County, destroying or damaging more than 18,000 structures. They overwhelmed systems, exposed the fragility of emergency infrastructure, and revealed deep failures in communication between agencies, buildings, and the people they were meant to protect.
One of the worst-hit areas was Altadena, where 18 residents lost their lives, many elderly or disabled. At least a third had documented mobility impairments. Some never received evacuation alerts. There was no real-time responder data. No location-aware coordination.
Initial investigations suggest that aging utility infrastructure, including power lines operated by Southern California Edison, may have contributed to the fires.
If that proves true, the question becomes larger than liability.
If lives were lost because critical infrastructure failed both physically and informationally, then what kind of accessibility failure is that?
Could systemic neglect of data access, from utilities to owners, ultimately constitute an ADA issue at scale?
Image Source: ChatGPT
This wasn’t just a tragedy; it was a failure of design, governance, and digital access, a failure to provide equal access to life safety, the very promise the ADA was built to uphold.
From care homes to cities, the pattern holds: the most vulnerable are left waiting, and those sent to save them are flying blind.
That’s what the silent scream of buildings sounds like in real life.
“Every hospital patient, every resident confined to a bed, is effectively disabled in an emergency. If systems cannot guarantee evacuation, then these facilities are not ADA-compliant, and lives are at risk.”
— Fire Chief Victor Esch
When buildings can’t talk, responders are forced to create reality, a human hallucination as dangerous as any from AI.
We shouldn’t tolerate guesswork in healthcare, and we certainly can’t afford to in life safety.
These disasters made headlines, but Fire Chief Victor Esch reminds us they’re only the visible tip of a much larger problem.
“It’s not just the high-profile cases,” he says. “Whether it’s a warehouse, a school, or a single-family home, we rarely have access to real building data. Large or small, we go in blind.”
The crisis isn’t limited to catastrophe; it’s built into daily operations. The silence is systemic.
4.5 The Soul of all Buildings
The Altadena fire struck a residential neighborhood, but the failure it revealed runs through every sector of the built environment, especially the institutions that should be leading by example.
- Colleges and universities are responsible for thousands of students and staff.
- Healthcare systems with vulnerable patients in complex, high-risk facilities.
- Commercial portfolios that brand themselves as “smart” yet lock out responders.
- Federal, state, and local agencies are managing billions in public infrastructure with outdated systems.
Many of these institutions already collect and utilize facility data on a daily basis for scheduling, energy management, maintenance, and access control.
They serve dashboards, monitor equipment, and advertise their digital transformation.
But when it matters most, in a fire, a flood, or an active-shooter event, the building goes silent.
That’s not an oversight. That’s liability.
If a student can see their class schedule, but a firefighter can’t see the stairwell, something is broken.
If a “smart” building can manage HVAC control, but can’t surface that data for rescue, that’s negligence.
Effective emergency response depends on governance, not hype. And increasingly, it’s about civil rights.
4.6 Diagnosing
Building owners often measure success through the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), including energy, maintenance, upgrades, and operational costs. But we’ve entered a new reality where Total Risk of Ownership (TRO) is the more urgent metric.
TRO is the combined legal, financial, operational, and reputational exposure resulting from inaccessible building data, particularly during emergencies.
When buildings can’t communicate, risk multiplies:
- Insurance premiums rise.
- Emergency response slows or fails.
- Injuries and deaths lead to investigations and lawsuits.
- Compliance and governance come under scrutiny.
- Public trust collapses.
These aren’t hypotheticals. People have died.
As the legal lens shifts toward ADA and civil rights accountability, the stakes are escalating fast.
What happens when the subpoena arrives:
“Show us what data you had. Show us why responders were not able to access it.”
Owners who delay aren’t being careful; they’re accumulating liability. Closed systems don’t save money; they store risk.
Fixing this isn’t “best practice”; it’s a legal and moral imperative.
Image Source: ZAiMAP
4.7 Colleges as the First Clinical Trial
This is more than a diagnosis; it’s a working proposal already in motion.
For years, we’ve collaborated with the California Community Colleges (CCCs) to develop structured, accessible digital twin data as a system of systems across the entire state. 5,000 buildings, 90 million square feet, ready to open secure, read-only access for emergency response.
The technology exists. The data is live. The framework is proven.
Planners, custodians, faculty, and facility managers already utilize this information on a daily basis.
The only thing missing? Emergency responders.
Here’s the offer:
If the CCCs approve it, secure, read-only emergency access could be implemented statewide tomorrow at no cost to participating districts.
This is not a vendor pitch. It’s a call to accountability for every vendor, consultant, and platform provider working with building owners:
- If tools can support scheduling and maintenance, they can support safety.
- If dashboards can serve occupants and staff, they can serve responders.
- If a system claims to be “open” but responders can’t use it, it’s not truly open.
We’ve demonstrated its feasibility by aligning with open data standards and accessible APIs, rather than proprietary code. Others can, and must, do the same.
The CCCs are uniquely positioned to lead:
- Public mission
- Statewide reach
- Digital infrastructure already in place
- A visible willingness to act
One “yes” from leadership could ripple across the entire education sector, proving that doing the right thing doesn’t have to wait for a mandate.
4.8 Restoring Voice and Vital Signs
The ADA analogy is simple: building sensors and systems that “speak” is a life-safety necessity. Fire departments require even basic building data to locate stranded occupants, avoid hazards, and understand structural risks without relying on guesswork. A perfect digital twin is not what they need. The pertinent information they need should be accessible. Start with the minimum. One current floor plan per level. A dot for every shutoff and hazard. Make that visible to responders by default.”
Right now, it’s not. The result is that first responders must reverse-engineer critical knowledge in real-time during an emergency, risking lives that could have been saved. This is about the accessibility of knowledge as a safety obligation.
Image Source: ChatGPT
Fixing this won’t come from another spec, dashboard, or closed solution.
The problem isn’t a lack of tools; it’s a lack of alignment and accountability.
That means:
- Owners must demand open, structured data throughout the entire design and operations process.
- Designers and engineers must deliver models that remain usable after construction is complete.
- Vendors must unlock APIs and break down data silos.
- Responders must expect more.
- ADA advocates must help define digital accessibility.
- Standards bodies must align around interoperability and resilience.
We’re not starting from scratch.
The Coalition for Smarter Buildings (C4SB) and the Asset Leadership Network (ALN), in collaboration with the Linux Foundation, are already developing an open-source solution to address the challenges outlined above.
This is a call to accountability, grounded in transparency, interoperability, and a sense of urgency.
Any thoughts? Post them here.
This is Part 4 of a four-part series. Here’s what’s coming next:
- Part 1 – Everything BiM-Everywhere GiS-All Together DigitalTwins-All at Once Ai
- Synchronizing the chaos into a system of systems
- Part 2 – Planes, Trains, Buildings & Synchronized Assets
- Voices from the stage: OBO, Plannerly, Autodesk, ESRI, DOTs, and more. What worked, what didn’t, why validation matters, and how to openBIM.
- Part 3 – Unsafe by Design for Operations
- The inherent dangers of siloed building data, and why open source is the solution.
- Part 4 – Access Denied: When Buildings Don’t Talk, Calamity Does
- The silent scream of buildings, and the cost of ignoring it.
Next, a conclusion to this series: An action plan we can all be part of.
