Abstract
The buildings and construction sector accounts for the majority of the energy consumption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). For a sustainable future, energy consumption in the sector should be reduced and existing buildings need to be energy retrofitted. A number of studies present energy retrofitting of residential buildings in KSA; however, there is a lack of studies presenting retrofitting of educational buildings. Thus, the aim of this study is to adopt a BIM-based approach to assess Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) in a prototypical Government-built educational building in Dammam, KSA. The methodology consists of six prime steps, (1) case study data collection, (2) energy auditing, (3) proposing ECMs, (4) BIM model development, (5) energy assessment, and (6) economic assessment. The energy audit revealed several inefficiencies in the building construction and operation and four ECMs were proposed and simulated. It was found that annual energy consumption can be reduced by 22.7% in the educational building, and the investment for the four ECMs is paid back in 2.7 years only. Therefore, implementing the proposed ECMs is a viable option to energy retrofit such educational buildings in the country, and the presented BIM-based approach can be adopted to efficiently conduct the energy retrofitting process.
Highlights
Climate change is one of the most serious threats to society
The aim of this study is to apply a Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based approach to perform a techno-economic assessment of Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) in an educational building in Eastern Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)
A BIM-based approach was adopted to assess the techno-economic feasibility of energy retrofitting an educational building in KSA
Summary
Climate change is one of the most serious threats to society. Climate change is evident around the world in the form of rapidly increasing number of natural disasters and rate of global warming. Countries globally are introducing initiatives and measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. The buildings and construction sector is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, and accounts for more than 40% of the materials consumption, 30% of the total global energy consumption, and more than onethird greenhouse gas emissions globally [1]. Some areas of the earth have experienced an increase in temperature by 2.5 ◦ C [2].
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