Developing a BIM-Based Methodology Framework for Sustainability Analysis of Low Carbon High-Rise Buildings

In high-density high-rise cities such as Hong Kong, buildings account for nearly 90% of energy consumption and 61% of carbon emissions. Therefore, it is important to study the design of buildings, especially high-rise buildings, to achieve lower carbon emissions in the city. The carbon emissions of a building consist of embodied carbon from the production of construction materials and operational carbon from energy consumption during daily operation (e.g., air-conditioning and lighting). An integrated analysis of both types of carbon emissions can strengthen the design of low carbon buildings, but most of the previous studies concentrated mainly on either embodied or operational carbon. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to develop a holistic methodology framework considering both embodied and operational carbon, in order to enhance the sustainable design of low carbon high-rise buildings. The framework will be based on the building information modeling (BIM) technology because BIM can be integrated with simulation systems and digital models of different disciplines, thereby enabling a holistic design and assessment of low carbon buildings. Structural analysis program is first coupled with BIM to validate the structural performance of a building design. The amounts of construction materials and embodied carbon are then quantified by a BIM-based program using the Dynamo programming interface. Operational carbon is quantified by energy simulation software based on the green building extensible Markup Language (gbXML) file from BIM. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) will be applied to analyze the ambient wind effect on indoor temperature and operational carbon. The BIM-based framework serves as a decision support tool to compare and explore more environmentally-sustainable design options to help reduce the carbon emissions in buildings.