Heritage BIM and performance simulation interoperability: methodological insights from representative case studies in Cyprus and Italy

BIM advances for the AEC industry’s digital transformation agenda is hindered by poor software interoperability with Building Performance Simulation (BPS) tools. In an effort to identify the causes of this barrier and address possible directions to overcoming challenges, this paper presents two semi-automatic BIM to BPS workflows for heritage buildings, following the employment of the gbXML and the IFC exchange schemas respectively. Each workflow encompasses the integration of dynamic energy simulation data, as well as the conversion of morphologically complex geometries from BIM to the streamlined requirements of the respective numerical simulation engines. These parallel workflows are implemented and assessed through their application for the energy and environmental improvement of two heritage buildings, located in Cyprus and Italy. These buildings are studied as specific cases to drive the development of an energy simulation-based Heritage BIM (HBIM) workflow presented here. The findings of this research offer methodological insights into BIM data integration strategies and best practices in modeling for the schema-based workflows presented. Finally, the paper discusses impending methodological framework improvements and argues for the impact of specific roles and expertize on the process, in an effort to establish an adequate interoperability maturity level of BIM models in said operations.