Using Open BIM and IFC to Enable a Comprehensive Consideration of Building Services within a Whole-Building LCA

Abstract

Holistic views of all environmental impacts for buildings such as Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) are rarely performed. Building services are mostly included in this assessment only in a simplified way, which means that their embodied impacts are usually underestimated. Open Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) provide for significantly more efficient and comprehensive LCA performance. This study investigated how building services can be included in an open BIM-integrated whole-building LCA for the first time, identified challenges and showed six solution approaches. Based on the definition of 222 exchange requirements and their mapping with IFC, an example BIM model was modeled before the linking of 7312 BIM objects of building services with LCA data that were analyzed in an LCA tool. The results show that 94.5% of the BIM objects could only be linked by applying one of the six solution approaches. The main problems were due to: (1) modeling by a lack of standardization of attributes of BIM objects; (2) difficult machine readability of the building services LCA datasets as well as a general lack of these; and (3) non-standardized properties of building services and LCA specific dataset information in the IFC data format.

BIM-Based Life Cycle Assessment of Buildings—An Investigation of Industry Practice and Needs

“…In several countries, including Denmark, the use of BIM is required for public procurement of buildings, and the delivery must happen through IFC, which is an open interoperability standard [29,30] for architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), and facility management (FM). Several BIM-LCA studies have focused on IFC to support interoperability [31][32][33][34], however there is still a challenge with the poor design of the models [4,35]. This challenge could be addressed through a transparent and visual BIM-LCA approach.…”

Rumo à definição de ‘Product Data Templates’ nacionais para aplicação generalizada em contexto BIM: Esforços da CT197

“…Existem alguns trabalhos na bibliografia sobre normalização de PDTs [1], [5], [14]- [16], no entanto não se focam nos processos de criação de PDTs nem disponibilizam conjuntos alargados de PDTs para uso generalizado [9], [17]- [19]. Apesar das evoluções reportadas, existe ainda pouco trabalho dedicado ao enquadramento normativo mais recente, que conta com documentos tão recentes como 2020 no caso da EN ISO 23386.…”

A Systematic Review of Green Building Development in China: Advantages, Challenges and Future Directions

“…In the process of BIM and digital twin implementation in green buildings, the IFC (Industry Foundation Class) and gbXML are adopted as the data organization formats [191][192][193]. Moreover, the IFD (International Framework for Dictionaries) is utilized to determine the designations and definitions of the various objects and components in the BIM and digital twin model [194,195]. Moreover, IDM is performed to deliver the demand for corresponding data in the entire processes [187,188].…”