Maria Grazia Donatiello

To evaluate the energy and solar potential of the building stock and address feasibility studies of building retrofit interventions information standards are required to ensure proper data flow from building and urban models to simulation environments. Energy performance data are gathered from different information containers and therefore the result of simulations needs to be shared in BIM/GIS environments to better address energy policies and decision-making processes. Solar potential and energy retrofit estimation, developed by means of urban models (U-BEM) are too rough to support a decision-making process, even if at a feasibility stage. On the opposite, strategic decisions are defined with reference to large building stocks that require a U-BEM approach. To increase the reliability of this kind of simulations the study proposes to integrate U-BEMS with BIM-based data that are aggregated and published at urban scale as average performance indicators of built systems. The interoperability problem is analyzed both for simulation tools that need to manage this kind of data and openBIM/GIS platforms that need to share performance indicators and simulation results

Cost estimation for tendering is one of the leading causes of legal disputes in the architecture, engineering, construction, and facilities management (AEC/FM) industry. The lack of a standardised support procedure to verify the association of cost data with the objects model causes waste of time and inaccuracy in the cost estimation. This research work, starting from a previous study where the research group integrated a cost domain in the IFC data schema, investigated the possible applications of this IFC based cost domain integrated with an IFC geometrical information model. The current paper investigates a specific case study focused on a structural model to verify current and future applications. Furthermore, rules for BIM information requirements will be defined through the Information Delivery Specification (IDS) to ensure an easy way for humans and computers to understand it. This will allow to specify which data must be present in the geometric model to subsequently ensure validation and verification of uniqueness of the cost data associated with geometric data. The results show the possibility to define a structured cost items in IFC associated through relationships to other entities and then verify their association to geometric data to guarantee its consistency and uniqueness