Z E M C H 2 0 1 2 I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f e r e n c e
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Modern information and communication technology enables unparalleled collaboration of
systems and user groups, and a wide choice of sensor/actuator topologies in terms of
wired/wireless layers. This is leading to a requirement to efficiently define methods of
managing the explosion of data and more importantly, appropriately linking and making
sense of the information logically. BIM helps achieves some of these goals, with
efficient tightly defined relational data structures, but this is fundamentally half the
potential benefit, and BIM needs to be projected beyond the design phases, to support
further integration of data collection and manipulation methods to provide an evolving
model of the building as a living and breathing entity that can improve itself and alert to
any problems, through continual self-diagnosis and reporting.
Companies and practitioners currently promote BIM as a tool to share data between
various user groups as a way of efficient dynamic work flow, and effective project
planning, but the concept has tremendous weight as a technology for the building to
manage itself by combining the static building data with the dynamic data generated
from monitoring subsystems. In other words, BIM needs to be encapsulated in the
Building Management System (BMS) layer, whereby the BMS has full knowledge of the
BIM and is better equipped therefore to manage itself. The combination of the BIM data
with building behaviour data collected by the BMS can help to predict scenarios (to
optimise or mitigate) and with the provision of data on a community wide scale,
techniques such as Demand Side Management make efficient shared resource
allocation possible for renewable energy sources.
The structural robustness of the Enemetric modular systems under extreme loads such
as earthquake and fire have been carried out using detailed finite element models. A
BMS system with structural monitoring component has been installed in a sample house,
with system identification being carried out through continuous real-time monitoring of
ambient and forced vibrations, as well as energy and environmental monitoring with
heating and lighting control. Full structural dynamic models and thermal models of the
sample house have been constructed to help assist in developing integrated control and
maintenance strategies. A BIM approach has been used, combining energy and
structural monitoring, with optimising procedures, optionally assisted by simulation.
These concepts shall be discussed.
Section 1: Applying BIM to Manage & Reuse Data
BIM evolved as a superset of the 3D CAD model of a building, containing parametric
information supplemented with object relationships, which can support the simulation of
a building virtually, permitting experimentation, by modification of design parameters.
BIM
is therefore, geared towards automating the creation of optimised buildings (in terms
of energy use and structural design), and management of building data. However the
current methodology does not include further methods of data collection and storage
through online monitoring, and additional manipulation through data analysis in
simulated models can help to improve performance or mitigate any problems during the
building lifetime, when BIM is encapsulated in a Building Management System. This
would also enable the automatic updating of building information models (Hwang and
Liu, 2010) for continual self-diagnosis and reporting to aid 6D BIM, in terms of lifetime
management. The main focus of BIM thus far has been interoperability between software
and data re-use, particularly with design simulation tools, which up this point has been a
successful reason for its recent widespread adoption in the AEC industry, especially in
terms of collaboration.
