IBPSA-USA

BDE Building Data Exchange

Building Data Exchange (BDE) Committee

Our Project
Deliverables
About The Committee
Committee Roster

About the Committee

The Building Data Exchange Committee was formed to provide an inclusive forum to support the development of tool-agnostic consensus-based data models for the design, analysis, and operational performance of buildings. Our committee members co-author and publish Consensus Documents for Building Data Exchange and participate in related industry forums to encourage open information-sharing in the development of pertinent data infrastructure for buildings. The committee currently has four working groups:

  • Data Modeling: Developing a common framework and vocabulary for discussing and developing data models and data schemas
  • Climate Information: Facilitating the development of consensus data model(s) to represent climate information for building design, analysis, and operation
  • Compliance and Certification:  Improving the efficiency of sharing Building Performance Simulation (BPS) data with administrators of compliance and certification programs.
  • BIM to BEM: Inform other BDE working groups, including the Data Models and Compliance and Certification Reporting by focusing on the architectural aspects of BIM to BEM translation. The working group will document the findings in a consensus document prepared by the group’s core members and in collaboration with a larger group consisting of BEM and BIM professionals as well as software and schema developers.
  1. Provide an inclusive forum to collaboratively support tool-agnostic data exchange through the development of consensus-based data models for the design, analysis, and operational performance of buildings; and
  2. Participate in related industry forums and standards committees to encourage open information-sharing in the development of pertinent data infrastructure for buildings.

This committee can – 

  1. periodically distribute surveys to identify key barriers to developing a cohesive data ecosystem for multiple use cases throughout a building’s life-cycle;
  2. organize webinars for industry stakeholders to demonstrate their data models and solicit feedback from end-users, software developers, and others; and
  3. facilitate the authoring and publishing of Consensus Documents with standard data models for specific applications in building design, analysis, and operation.

Deliverables

Climate Data Model Specification

This document defines the capabilities or functionalities of a data model to exchange climate data for use in performance simulation for building design, analysis, and operation. 

The document is published below and is also available for download. You can also access this document online here.

BDE Surveys

Use of data models within the building performance simulation sector

The IBPSA-USA Building Data Exchange (BDE) subcommittee circulated a survey on the use of data models in the building performance simulation realm.  The survey was announced through the IBPSA-USA listserv and other email mailing lists.  A total of 62 responses to the survey were collected.  The vast majority of the respondents fell into three work categories: consulting engineer (34%), energy modeler (32%) and researcher (23%).

Read the full survey report here.

Committee Roster

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