Product model-based optimization of the eco-efficiency of buildings

In civil engineering, utilization and maintenance are two of the determining ecological and economical factors in a building's life cycle, compared to the construction and demolition phases. From the planning point of view, a rational approach is to estimate and reduce the required resources as far as possible during the early design phase. For this purpose, the Munich Institute of Computational Civil and Environmental Engineering has developed software tools in cooperation with the German consulting and engineering company COPLAN AG. The aim is to automate and accelerate the creation of numerical models for life-cycle analysis and assess construction and maintenance costs taking various time scales into account. Our product model-based approach is of considerable advantage as it makes it possible to estimate the consumption of energy and resources over the entire life cycle of a building and the building occupancy expenses by providing the means to access all relevant data.