Interactive visualization of uncertain embodied GHG emissions for design decision support in early stages using open BIM

To meet the European climate goals in the building sector, a holistic calculation and optimization of embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using the method of life cycle assessment (LCA) in early design stages are necessary. Hence, this paper presents a comprehensive and transparent design-decision-making approach for reducing embodied GHG emissions in early design stages by interactive, model-based visualizations of uncertain results. The proposed approach is based on a previously developed Natural Language Processing (NLP) based methodology of matching elements of a Building Information Model (BIM) to those of an LCA database. With the help of a prototypical implementation and a case study, the uncertainties of the derived LCA results are visualized using different levels of transparencies. This paper shows that open BIM models and the proposed 3D color coding support the hotspot analysis in combination with box plot diagrams for visualizing uncertain GWP results for decision-making in early design stages.