Using a BIM flow for the design and operation of Building Energy Management Systems

This paper reports our experiences using the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach within the FP7 project SEEDS (Self Learning Energy Efficient Buildings and open Spaces). SEEDS focuses on the development of an optimized Building Energy Management System (BEMS) that reduces the energy consumption and the CO2 emission of the building services during its operation phase based on self-learning techniques. One of the core components of the SEEDS architecture is the Building Model which calculates the energy consumption of the building. In this paper, we introduce an approach for the automatic creation of this SEEDS Building Model from an IFC data model. For an application case, the ability of IFC data models to describe building services is discussed. The introduced methodology was implemented for the energy management of an HVAC system using the CAD tool DDS-CAD 7.3.