Extending the IFC-Based bim2sim Framework to Improve the Accessibility of Thermal Comfort Analysis Considering Future Climate Scenarios

Abstract

Future weather scenarios significantly affect indoor thermal comfort, influencing people’s well-being and productivity at work. Thus, future weather scenarios should be considered in the design phase to improve a building’s climate change resilience for new constructions as well as renovations in building stock. As thermal comfort is highly influenced by internal and external thermal loads resulting from weather conditions and building usage, only a dynamic building performance simulation (BPS) can predict the boundary conditions for a thermal comfort analysis during the design stage. As the model setup for a BPS requires detailed information about building geometry, materials, and usage, recent research activities have tried to derive the required simulation models from the open BIM (Building Information Modeling) Standard IFC (Industry Foundation Classes). However, even if IFC data are available, they are often faulty or incomplete. We propose a template-based enrichment of the BPS models that assists with imputing missing data based on archetypal usage of thermal zones. These templates are available for standardized enrichment of BPS models but do not include the required parameters for thermal comfort analysis. This study presents an approach for IFC-based thermal comfort analysis and a set of zone-usage-based templates to enrich thermal comfort input parameters.