skip to content

Centre for Digital Built Britain completed its five-year mission and closed its doors at the end of September 2022

This website remains as a legacy of the achievements of our five-year foundational journey towards a digital built Britain
 

How can buildings’ energy use and embodied energy both be optimized at the design stage? 

This project aims to enable the generation of real-time data from operational energy use and from energy embedded in building components. It will do this through 3-D computing paradigm at an early building design stage, coupled with operational energy input, bringing a new approach to total life analysis of energy and carbon. Such data will allow more accurate prediction of impacts and material performance by linking both operational and embodied energy in one tool.

Outcomes

This project developed a unique parametric design-based methodology for estimating total energy use in a building, utilising Building Information Modelling (BIM) frameworks and protocols. Results from the work have indicated that embodied energy can be much more significant in the first few phases of the buildings life cycle, and material selection can be addressed within a parametric model, meaning that buildings can be designed to be more "green" using BIM-based modelling.

Method

Prototyping

Next Steps

The tool described in this paper would require user feedback and further iterations to refine it before wider adoption.

Presentation at CDBB Week 2019

Project Status

Prototyping

Publications