3D Thermal Modeling for Existing Buildings using Hybrid LIDAR System

This paper introduces an on-going research that develops a hybrid thermal LIDAR system for rapid thermal data measurement and 3D modeling of buildings, which will allow “virtual” representations for the energy and environmental performance of existing buildings. The modeled building is created for retrofit decision-support tools for the decision makers such as occupants, owners, and outside consultants of the buildings. Existing buildings represent the greatest opportunity to improve building energy efficiency and reduce environmental impacts. This research aims to stimulate the decision makers to improve their buildings by providing reliable and visualized information of their building’s energy performance using the developed hybrid thermal LIDAR system. The created 3D model contains point clouds of building envelop and thermal data on each point including temperature (C) and thermal color generated from the infrared camera. The developed system has successfully demonstrated its technical feasibility through intensive lab tests and a field experiment on residential house modeling.