IFC and PMO for estimating building environmental effects

This paper describes a software prototype that was developed for estimating building environmental effects. The software uses generic building information represented using IFC standard together with product specific environmental profiles represented in Product Modelling Ontology (PMO). By combining these information sources, the software makes estimates of the environmental effects of the building — such as carbon dioxide emissions during the building life cycle — by combining the effects of the different building elements. This kind of estimation enables designers to compare and choose environmentally friendly solutions and thus reduce environmental effects of buildings. The implementation used open simulation platform Simantics as information modelling and storage platform. The results show that open modelling platform could be used to implement even more complex simulation and assessment tasks than environmental effects estimation.