Developing a BIM-based process-driven decision-making framework for sustainable building envelope design in the tropics

Abstract

There is a rising concern for sustainability in the built environment. Therefore, numerous sustainable building certification and rating systems are developed throughout the world. However, the current methods of measuring, predicting, and optimising the sustainable building design have relied on a number of disjointed analyses to meet the discrete requirements for various building systems. The recent development of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology allows complicated building modelling to be digitally constructed with precise geometry and accurate information to support various building project stages. Thereby, this study aims to integrate decision-making (DM) for sustainable building envelope design with BIM functionalities by considering the tropical climatic contexts in Malaysia. Several regional sustainable building certification systems and related literature were reviewed to identify the importance of evaluation and DM criteria. The findings were then compared with various BIM tools in terms of their applications, functions and workflows, in order to formulate a process-driven BIM-based DM framework (DMF) for sustainable building design in Malaysia. The proposed DMF will address the difficulties of DM in the early design development process, and will also allow for specific trade-off analyses of sustainability and objective-based optimisation using BIM.