Cross information and BIM interoperability tools for energy retrofit analysis

In recent years the Building Energy Modelling (BEM) has emerged. It is based on BIM technology, that uses pre-designed BIM models to create an input for BEM tools, providing an opportunity to make BEM a time-saving, practical and accurate process. This format works quite efficiently for geometric information, while it presents interoperability issues due technical data loss. This study aims at creating a tool that collects and imports information in the BIM model in order to be exported by the IFC standard and read by the energy analysis software, crossing from BIM to BEM model. Considering the complexity of historic buildings' energy retrofit design, it is crucial to find and develop a fluid method that can automatically transfer the needed information, reducing considerably the time spent on preparing the BEM model. To achieve this goal, an open source Visual Programming Language tool and a specific Property Set for IFC exportation have been used. It was possible to transfer the needed parameters, while restricting as much as possible the human's transcription mistakes. This approach has been applied to the energy preliminary analyses of an historic farmstead near Milan, proving the decrease in time spent on transcribing, exporting and checking parameters. Due to the possibility of saving and reproducing VPL scripts in different BIM projects, the results of this study will be easily replicable and could be a usable tool for designers.