Using building information modeling for measuring the efficiency of building energy performance

In the past few decades, a wide variety of building performance assessments have been developed by a combination of mathematical models and computer-aided design (CAD) methods to increase the efficiency of building design and construction. These approaches, such as CAD, three dimensional (3D) CAD and Object-Oriented CAD systems (OOCAD), greatly help users assess the building performance because of its capacity of automating the drafting process and furthermore, of visualizing complex 2D or 3D geometric and functional relationships between building objects. However, nonconsistent data during a building life cycle leads the performance assessment into a great dilemma, due to the lack of data sharing, exchange and interoperability. This paper proposes using the Building Information Modeling (BIM) to evaluate building energy performance in both design and construction process, based on gbXML files and Revit. Currently, BIM has been utilized to evaluate such a building performance, incorporating building information in multi-disciplinary such as geography, environmental conditions, properties of building components and construction technology. On the other hand, due to the increasing emphasis on climate change, the energy aspect of building performance assessment becomes a trend to fulfil building sustainability. In order to calculate the energy balances, various energy simulation programs are adopted, which result in a higher measurement precision to construct energy-efficient buildings. However, these energy simulation programs and energy-efficient methods are practically limited to construction phases. This paper also reports a case study to explore BIM technology in order to optimize energy-efficient design and use Revit to instantaneously measure energy and visualize the performance parameters.