Data Sharing for Sustainable Assessments: Using Functional Databases for Interoperating Multiple Building Information Structures

This paper presents the development and implementation of an automatic sustainable assessment prototype using functional databases. For the practical purpose, we use Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as the exemplar standard to demonstrate the integrative process from building information aggregation to final evaluation. We start with a Building Information model, and use Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) as a bridge to integrate LEED requirements. At present, the process of sustainable building assessment requires information exchange from various building professionals. However, there is no procedure to manage, or use, information pertaining to sustainability. In our research, we translate rules from LEED into computable formulas and develop a prototype application to produce templates for LEED submission.