Performance based building design through Building Energy Modeling (BEM)

The paper illustrates scientific and operational issues related to modeling activities that are necessary to support sustainable design. In this filed, there is the need to produce study models aimed at the analysis of a plurality of issues such as economic, energy and environmental ones. All of these issues affect each other in the same model. This interdependence requires the adoption of interoperable study models. What is deepened in the paper is the theme of interoperable information modeling (openBIM) in energy performance engineering analyzing the interoperability between building information models and building energy models (BIM to BEM). The work consists of the verification of procedures for sharing information in different computing environments and in relation to different building processes. The experiments carried out show that only part of the information content can be effectively transferred to the main energy simulation codes. Furthermore it highlights structural problems related to the inability to transfer the characteristics of technical elements in different phases of the construction process. This happens typically when renovating old buildings. In this kind of models the same technical element is shared with the simulation codes in two different phases (state of fact / state of the project) and should be able to expose in the two phases two different transmittance values. Future research includes the need to manage the different phases of the project within a single collaborative environment-pointed at performance-based building design.