Investigation of interoperability between building information modelling (BIM) and building energy simulation (BES)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has become an emerging digital technology in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. There is a growing demand on applying BIM for sustainable design including the building energy simulation (BES). Lack of sufficient interoperability has caused barriers to utilize the information from BIM for BES. In this study, the interoperability between BIM and four different BES tools (i.e., Ecotect, EQUEST, Design Builder and IES-VE) was explored by using a case study of a residential building in the design stage. The misrepresented information from BIM to multiple BES tools were identified based on six different categories of building information parameters. The research proposed an approach of creating gbXML file with an improved integrity of information in BIM. Overall, this study would lead to further work in developing platforms for improving the information transformation from BIM to BES.