BIM-Based Energy Mornitoring with XML Parsing Engine

Due to the urgent need for a response to energy security, aging commercial buildings are required to conform to increasingly stringent environmental standards, particularly with regard to energy and water consumption. Solutions to reach the energy-related goals seem to exist. However, it is often difficult to gain synergistic benefits from the installations. The energy savings actually achieved are often disappointing. Systematic measurement and verification are rarely available due to the high initial cost of such studies. Therefore, there is a significant chance that misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations will affect decision making related with building sustainability. The ability to synthesize emerging technologies into a robust computational platform for monitoring coupled human-building environments is lacking. This paper discusses developing a prototype of BIM-based Baseline Building Model (B3M) for aging commercial buildings. As-built BIM of a public building was employed as a platform for delivering user-actionable information to building occupants, maintaining healthy environments, and achieving further energy savings. Initial testing was conducted at the Technology Innovation Center with data collected for four months. The results of this study showed that B3M provides a robust computational platform for monitoring coupled human-building environments. B3M would be a useful system when aging commercial buildings need to measure and verify accurate benefits of the installations.