The challenge of measuring Whole Life Carbon (WLC) in an open source, free BIM model

Hi, I have just discovered OsArch, so thank you. It looks like great work! I work at the Irish Green Building Council and I have been tasked with finding a way to consistently measure the WLC of building designs so that we can start to understand the environmental impact of our buildings, both new and renovation at the design stage, rather than when it is tool late. This is an area that is growing rapidly and will be put into EU legislation in the near future. It is already a requirement in some countries (Denmark, Netherlands, France) but it is being applied in different ways that make it difficult to compare results and learn from one another. There is a standard for carrying out lifecycle analysis at the building level - EN15978 - and indeed there is one example of this being done in BIM - a Revit plugin called Tally (https://choosetally.com/). It's good, but we need a transparent, opensource, free version that can be used by anyone. I have a methodology for the calculations here on my desktop in an excel workbook. I've tested it and results are plausible but doing it is time consuming and happens too late in the design process. BlenderBIM looks promising to me but I don't have the BIM or programming skills to take this further and make it easier for building designers to consider this as a design evolves. I need help!
BuildingSmart hosts data dictionaries where you could define the data that should be attached to an IFC project or object in a BIM model.(https://www.buildingsmart.org/users/services/buildingsmart-data-dictionary/)
The GitHub for this is here - I'm getting out of my depth now: https://github.com/buildingSMART/bSDD/blob/master/Documentation/bSDD API.md)
https://ifcopenshell.org/ lets you code this data into an IFC project (I think).
Data on the environmental impact of the production of materials could be pulled from this database as it houses machine readable Environmental Product Displays (EPD) - https://www.eco-platform.org/epd-data.html.

Thanks for reading this post. I hope there are people out there who know what I'm talking about, have ideas and can help!
Stephen

Comments

  • It is already a requirement in some countries (Denmark, Netherlands, France)

    I think for the Netherlands you mean maybe MPG?

    There is a standard for carrying out lifecycle analysis at the building level - EN15978

    Reading the site I linked you I see they also reference to EN15978 De rekenregels zijn gedefinieerd in de EN 15978.
    I can find many sources with tools and such, but they're all in Dutch...

    I think IFC /BlenderBIM might be able to get some properties/quantities faster. Don't know what your question exactly is?

  • Blenderbim has some support for openlca, though I don't know how complete this is.

  • Thanks Coen, my main question is can we attach certain data points available at https://www.eco-platform.org/epd-data.html to shapes and objects in a BIM model in such a way that a bill of quantities could be produced with each line of data including a Global Warming Potential figure based on the mass in the BIM multiplied by the carbon factor available in the eco-platform database? I know the standard EN15978 very well, and the data we need to program into this, I just don't know how to code...

  • my main question is can we attach certain data points available at https://www.eco-platform.org/epd-data.html to shapes and objects in a BIM ?

    I see they have an API at https://www.eco-platform.org/epd-data.html

    https://www.eco-platform.org/epd-data.html to shapes and objects in a BIM model in such a way that a bill of quantities could be produced

    I think this is possible, but I'm not too knowledgeable about this eco-platform and can't really give a good answer.

    I just don't know how to code...

    I think many people here can help, do you have maybe a very specific example of a data point you would like to attach to objects in BIM?

    Also what's going to be the added value of connecting this information? I can imagine for quantities and such it could be speed up certain calculations. But that also really depends on the quality of the BIM.

  • edited March 2023

    Thanks Coen...Ecoplatform is an umbrella organisation for EPD operators across Europe. The operators (of which we, the IGBC (https://www.igbc.ie/epd/) are one), all provide EPD data from manufacturers in their jurisdiction. All EPDs are standards compliant (EN15804). I could talk about this side of the equation for hours but primarily I want to pull one datapoint, which is the global warming potential of the production of the material (known as the A1-3 in the EN15804 standard), and add it to the BIM object so that in theory every object in the model also has the global warming impact of its manufacture attached to it. It is a little trickier than I have made it sound in practice, but that is the fundamental concept....the API only launched last year after enough EPDs were digitalised, there are more being added all the time. The dataset and API are there specifically for this kind of application, we just need to create the tools to do it!...

  • Also what's going to be the added value of connecting this information? I can imagine for quantities and such it could be speed up certain calculations. But that also really depends on the quality of the BIM.

    The added value would be a transparent, open source, consistent way of calculating the environmental impact of a building design. There are currently a couple of tools out there that do this well but they require licences and are not open to scrutiny, which is what we need if we are to encourage building designers to specify low carbon products and therefor influence the supply chains that serve them. This is coming in EU legislation in the next few years (the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) so there will be similar requirements to what we see in a handful of countries now appearing across the EU in the next few years. https://www.bpie.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/WLC-and-EPBD-policy-briefing_v10.pdf

    Coen
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