Identifying use cases and data requirements for BIM based energy management

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Session 7 Paper 3, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, 14-15 April 2016

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Energy consumption over the whole Building Lifecycle (BLC) is difficult to monitor and predict due to the complexity of the processes involved. Building Information Modelling (BIM) addresses the management and interoperability of the data exchanged between different computer applications employed at different stages of the BLC. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is a leading standard of BIM implementation. As yet, IFC does not cover all data structures to meet the latest use case data requirements for energy management. Linking IFC with other available ontologies is one potential solution. In this paper 46 unique use cases are identified over 33 EU projects in the Energy Efficient Building domain and explored in order to identify the most relevant data domains across projects. These data domains will form the basis of a process of alignment of project data models with existing standards and ontologies. It will also provide the basis of guidelines for new projects wishing to improve interoperability.