Investigation of interoperability between building information modelling (BIM) and building energy simulation (BES)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has become an emerging digital technology in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. There is a growing demand on applying BIM for sustainable design including the building energy simulation (BES). Lack of sufficient interoperability has caused barriers to utilize the information from BIM for BES. In this study, the interoperability between BIM and four different BES tools (i.e., Ecotect, EQUEST, Design Builder and IES-VE) was explored by using a case study of a residential building in the design stage. The misrepresented information from BIM to multiple BES tools were identified based on six different categories of building information parameters. The research proposed an approach of creating gbXML file with an improved integrity of information in BIM. Overall, this study would lead to further work in developing platforms for improving the information transformation from BIM to BES.

[1]  Seongchan Kim,et al.  Analysis of the differences in energy simulation results between Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based simulation method and the detailed simulation method , 2011, Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC).

[2]  Mani Golparvar-Fard,et al.  Mapping actual thermal properties to building elements in gbXML-based BIM for reliable building energy performance modeling , 2015 .

[3]  Jeff Haberl,et al.  Developing a physical BIM library for building thermal energy simulation , 2015 .

[4]  Massimiliano Lo Turco,et al.  Architecture data and energy efficiency simulation: BIM and interoperability standards , 2011 .

[5]  Steven K. Firth,et al.  BIM enabled building energy modelling: development and verification of a GBXML to IDF conversion method , 2016 .

[6]  K. P. Lam,et al.  A comparative study of the IFC and gbXML informational infrastructures for data exchange in computational design support environments , 2007 .

[7]  Jim Steel,et al.  Model interoperability in building information modelling , 2009, Software & Systems Modeling.

[8]  James O'Donnell,et al.  Transforming BIM to BEM: Generation of Building Geometry for the NASA Ames Sustainability Base BIM , 2013 .

[9]  Javier Irizarry,et al.  Extending BIM interoperability to preconstruction operations using geospatial analyses and semantic web services , 2015 .

[10]  Salman Azhar,et al.  A Case Study of Building Performance Analyses Using Building Information Modeling , 2010 .

[11]  Pieter Pauwels,et al.  A semantic rule checking environment for building performance checking , 2011 .

[12]  Robina Hetherington,et al.  INTEGRATED BUILDING DESIGN, INFORMATION AND SIMULATION MODELLING: THE NEED FOR A NEW HIERARCHY , 2011 .

[13]  Alexandra Cemesova,et al.  PassivBIM: Enhancing interoperability between BIM and low energy design software , 2015 .

[14]  Hyeun Jun Moon,et al.  CASE STUDIES FOR THE EVALUATION OF INTEROPERABILITY BETWEEN A BIM BASED ARCHITECTURAL MODEL AND BUILDING PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS PROGRAMS , 2011 .