BIM-based building design platform-local environmental effects on building energy performances

For complex building projects, energy engineers, economists and other domain experts are usually integrated in the design team, to take part in the decision-making process starting from the beginning of the project. Within the current design practices, the iterative design process is difficult to implement, mainly because of the data exchange between the designers and the evaluators is far from optimized thus causing unacceptable delays. We present a BIM-based, on-the-cloud, collaborative building design software platform. This platform will account for all physical phenomena at the building level, while also taking into account external, neighborhood level influences. Within this platform, the paper presents the physical models developed to take into account local environmental effects on building energy performances. Several models are presented and applied to two building types (residential and office building). The results allow drawing some impact quantification of these new parameters in building energy consumption. The paper exposes the application of this platform as a tool to derive optimal building design under different constraints and gives perspectives for further works and developments.