Sustainable Infrastructure Design Framework through Integration of Rating Systems and Building Information Modeling

Yan Liu,Marcel Hertogh,Chunlin Wu,Sander Van Nederveen

doi:10.1155/2018/8183536

Abstract

BIM (building information modeling) can be the basis for carrying out various performance analyses. Sustainable infrastructure rating systems are suitable tools for assessing an infrastructure’s environmental performance. It is necessary to integrate them in the design process. The research adopted a thorough literature review to follow the development trends, interviews with professionals from the academia and industry, and a critical analysis of technical requirements for integrating BIM tools and infrastructure sustainability rating systems in the design process. This study propagates a conceptual framework for integrating sustainability rating systems by introducing BIM with a sustainability metric plug-in. The adoption of the proposed solution allows for what-if scenarios to better support the incorporation of sustainability into design decisions and the assessment of sustainability at the design phase of the infrastructure project. The framework is used to refine designs and ensure that sustainable goals are met and to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements. This paper concludes that greater emphasis should be placed on supporting technical requirements to facilitate the integration of BIM and sustainability rating systems. It defines the possibility of BIM adoption to influence the sustainable project performance in the infrastructure. This framework could streamline the sustainable design process and lead to more integrated infrastructure delivery.

Highlights

Infrastructure sustainability has attracted great attention [1]
Consultants, and contractors answered that they became aware of the importance of infrastructure sustainability, but they acted in their projects in a passive manner just following the existing regulations
As with earlier studies on literature and interviews, this study found that people are interested in the effect of Building information modeling (BIM) for infrastructure sustainability

Summary

Introduction

Infrastructure sustainability has attracted great attention [1]. It is rife with propaganda but requires much greater practical solutions. As the largest sustainability opportunities lie in the planning phase, sustainable design can be a critical success factor. All of these goals lead to more sustainable solutions for the infrastructure and are possible to be achieved with BIM. E major problem appears to be that it is not defined what infrastructure performance knowledge should be in the BIM. BIM is well suited to sustainability due to the capacity of BIM to inventory beneficial data for measuring life cycle costs or performing energy analysis. A lot of problems have been arising related to interoperability, regulation, and compliance issues

Methods

Results

Conclusion