TY - JOUR

T1 - Consistent management and evaluation of building models in the early design stages

AU - Abualdenien, Jimmy

AU - Schneider-Marin, Patricia

AU - Zahedi, Ata

AU - Harter, Hannes

AU - Exner, Hannah

AU - Steiner, Daniel

AU - Singh, Manav Mahan

AU - Borrmann, André

AU - Lang, Werner

AU - Petzold, Frank

AU - König, Markus

AU - Geyer, Philipp Florian

AU - Schnellenbach-Held, Martina

N1 - Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for funding the project under grant FOR 2363. We thank Ferdinand Tausendpfund GmbH & Co. KG for providing their office building as a sample project.

PY - 2020/3

Y1 - 2020/3

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Building Information Modeling (BIM)

KW - Design Management

KW - Design Variant

KW - Early Design Stages

KW - Embedded Energy Assessment

KW - Exchange Requirements (ER)

KW - Level Of Development (LOD)

KW - Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

KW - Life Cycle Energy Assessment (LCEA)

KW - Meta-model

KW - Multi-LOD

KW - Operational Energy Assessment

KW - Sustainable Building Design

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85085154354&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.36680/j.itcon.2020.013

DO - 10.36680/j.itcon.2020.013

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85085154354

VL - 25

SP - 212

EP - 232

JO - Journal of Information Technology in Construction

JF - Journal of Information Technology in Construction

SN - 1874-4753

ER -