Consistent management and evaluation of building models in the early design stages

authored by

Jimmy Abualdenien, Patricia Schneider-Marin, Ata Zahedi, Hannes Harter, Hannah Exner, Daniel Steiner, Manav Mahan Singh, André Borrmann, Werner Lang, Frank Petzold, Markus König, Philipp Florian Geyer, Martina Schnellenbach-Held

Abstract

The early stages of building design involve the consideration of different design variants and their assessment regarding various performance criteria including energy consumption and costs. During the design process, the involved experts from different disciplines frequently exchange building information to develop a design that satisfies the project's requirements and objectives. In the course of this iterative process, the building design evolves throughout multiple refinement stages. At the same time, different variants are developed. In BIM-based projects, the maturity of the design information provided by the model is expressed by the notion of Level of development (LOD). So far, however, there is no method to formally define the information requirements of a LOD. In particular, there are no means for expressing the uncertainty involved with the provided information. By contrast, despite the insufficient information available in early design stages, a BIM model appears precise and certain. This situation leads to false assumptions and model evaluations, for example, in the case of energy efficiency calculations or structural analysis. Hence, this paper presents an overview of a set of approaches that were developed to alleviate and preserve the consistency of the designed solutions. The approach includes the development of a multi-LOD meta-model, which allows one to explicitly describe the LOD requirements of each building component type incorporating the possible uncertainties, e.g. concerning the building dimensions. On the basis of this multi-LOD model, methods for evaluating a building design's performance regarding the building's structure and life cycle energy performance are proposed that take the defined uncertainties into account. To support the management of design variants in one consistent model, a graph-based approach is introduced. Finally, a minimized communication protocol is described to facilitate the workflow and communicate the evaluation results for supporting the decision-making process.

External Organisation(s)

Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
University of Duisburg-Essen
KU Leuven
Technische Universität Berlin

Type

Article

Journal

Journal of Information Technology in Construction

Volume

25

Pages

212-232

No. of pages

21

ISSN

1874-4753

Publication date

03.2020

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Civil and Structural Engineering, Building and Construction, Computer Science Applications

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.36680/j.itcon.2020.013 (Access: Open)