Development of a Framework to Support Whole Life Cycle Net-Zero Carbon Buildings through Integration of Building Information Modelling and Digital Twins

Abstract

Achieving whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings requires decision-making on reducing building carbon emissions at each stage during the entire building lifecycle in an integrated way. However, most existing research has focused on embodied and operational carbon assessment separately, without considering carbon emissions occurred across all building stages. There is a lack of integration of the key decision variables throughout the whole lifecycle building process to support decision-making in achieving whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings. Building information modelling (BIM) provides an object-based representation of a building which facilitates exchange and interoperability of building information across multiple disciplines. Most BIM applications are focused on design and construction stages. There is a lack of entities, properties, and relationships in the current Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema required to support whole life net-zero carbon buildings. Digital Twin (DT) is a virtual representation of building assets, processes, and systems. It can facilitate the construction and operation of buildings by simulating real-time building conditions. Integrating information acquired by DT with BIM has considerable potential to enable whole life cycle net-zero carbon assessment. Therefore, a framework integrating BIM and DT is needed to provide ontology-based computational representation to incorporate all key decision variables throughout the entire building process to support decision-making on net-zero carbon buildings.

To fill the gap, this research develops a novel framework that integrates BIM and DT to tackle challenges in supporting net-zero carbon buildings over the whole building lifecycle. Firstly, through a systematic literature review, all key decision variables affecting net-zero carbon outcomes of buildings at each key building stage, throughout the whole building lifecycle, are identified. Then, a mapping process between identified variables and the existing IFC schema is conducted to define these variables using current IFC entities, properties, and relationships. Finally, through utilising the ontology-based representation method, the novel framework is developed by proposing an extension to the current IFC schema and integrating data from the DT to encourage well-informed decision-making on whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings. The framework has the potential to pave the way for further research on an automated system to support well-informed decision-making on whole life cycle net-zero carbon buildings.