An integrated BIM-LEED application to automate sustainable design assessment framework at the conceptual stage of building projects

Abstract Construction industry has become more interested in designing and constructing environmentally friendly buildings that can provide both high performance and monetary savings. Generally, the sustainability analysis is mostly conducted at the end of the design stage, once their components and elements have already been selected. However, achieving an integrated sustainable design solution prior to construction means that the design team must manage reciprocal task interdependencies when making decisions related to the selection of the most suitable design alternative that will lead to sustainable and efficient buildings. This study describes a methodology to automate the process sustainability assessment for proposed buildings by integrating Building Information Model (BIM) and LEED certification system while providing a framework to calculate the credits that building could potentially earn at the conceptual stage. This research aims to propose an integrated methodology that links BIM with green building certification systems at the early design stage of a project’s life. A plug-in is developed to calculate and predict the potential accumulated LEED credits with access to the Application Program Interface (API) of the BIM tool, energy analysis and lighting simulation tool, Google Map and their associated library. The plug-in uses K Nearest Neighbour (KNN) data mining method to estimate the missing credits, which could not be calculated directly from design specifications, to propose the whole scale innovative green building evaluation interface for building projects.