Building elements re-usability optimization-Design decision support using a case-base of building information models and semantic fingerprints

The complexity of the requirements on buildings is continuously increasing and thus, often confronting designers with interdisciplinary problems, reaching far beyond the traditional challenges and methods of architecture and engineering. Moreover, designers are often required to take decisions, when most of the information and knowledge is still missing or to be generated. In the context of sustainable building design, the re-usability of building elements and the optimisation for exchangeability is crucial for the achievement of two of the main goals: efficient use of material resources and waste reduction. The scope of this work in progress is describing requirements for case-based decision support in order to optimise building element re-usability, create an analysis of explicit re-usability indicators (e.g. "connection liberation", "modularity" or "life span collision") and to identify retrieval strategies. A proposal to support decision making processes by retrieving existing design solutions graph representations as well as the use of building information models are also described.