Digitisation of existing buildings to support building assessment schemes: viability of automated sustainability-led design scan-to-BIM process

ABSTRACT

Buildings’ functional and physical characteristics can be digitally represented through Building Information Modelling (BIM) which creates a sharing platform for all stakeholders involved in the project lifecycle. The application of BIM has been studied throughout the years mainly in new buildings with less emphasis in refurbishing existing ones due to the limited availability of accurate data of the original project. However, maintaining and refurbishing existing buildings often contributes to higher risk and cost. In addition, more buildings are required to undertake building assessment schemes such as Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Green Star, Green Mark, and Green Building Index (GBI) – most were not designed to assess existing buildings. In this sense, laser scanning can be used to collect existing parametric building data as point clouds, which can be developed and used for modelling of energy consumption, comfort and costing. This can be then translated back into assessment schemes. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the process flow in the usage of laser scanning for existing buildings to support sustainability-led design by a new scan-to-BIM process.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment schemes
• BIM
• laser scanning
• refurbishment
• sustainability-led design
• scan-to-BIM

Acknowledgements

We would also like to thank Mr Laurence Loh of LLA Architects Malaysia for access to the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Penang, Malaysia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Eric C. W. Lou http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7099-1426

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by BECAS Chile (Folio 72170109), National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT), Ministry of Education, Chile.