Rule-based Life-cycle assessment from BIM model

Rule-based LCA-calculations from BIM modelAn increasing number of property owners, developers and contractors are investing resources in creating well-developed BIM models in their construction projects. At the same time, there are requirements to calculate the climate impact in different construction phases.

This project aims to create a scalable flow to enable climate calculation of both simple and complex construction projects, based on BIM models from various construction stages.Climate calculation is today a central task in the construction industry.

According to Boverket the construction and real estate sector accounts for just over 20 per cent of the total greenhouse gas-emissions in Sweden.

To guide towards a reduced climate impact from buildings during construction, a new law on climate declaration of buildings will be introduced in January 2022.The transfer of information between the BIM model and climate calculation tools is a known problem, which has been studied in several of the previous calls.

One of the conclusions is that standardization is the most promising solution. Standardization will however probably be fragmented and remain so for a long time.

There are no effective methods for making full use of the information contained in today´s BIM models.This project aims to explore methods to enhance taking advantage of the data already in today’s BIM models. An important success factor is to integrate skills from different disciplines. In recent years, several pieces of the puzzle have come into place in machine learning and AI in Sweden.

By creating a combined solution, which benefits from a rule-based material interpretation and in some cases use AI, the project hopes to be able to contribute with a new method for climate calculation from BIM models. There are also non-technical obstacles that need to be overcome. The project will therefore set up a Knowledge Portal to spread knowledge about climate calculations from BIM models.