978-1-6654-4285-5/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE The Role of BIM in Achieving Sustainable and Environmental Aspects for Interior Spaces Ahmed Hassanin El-fayoumy Department of furniture and interior design Faculty of Applied Arts Damietta, Egypt ahmed_elfayoumey@yahoo.com Abstract— As the twenty-first century begins, moving towards economic and sustainable aspects is quite obvious for the interior design industry. BREEAM, DGNB and LEED are modern Global environmental certification systems that has appeared and started to change design industry from professional practice to a thriving demand in the market share. BIM significance appeared through transforming products data and their environmental properties available such as energy consumption, product life span and maintenance rates to a usable integrated database. The problem that faces most of designers is which products to use in interior space to achieve a sustainable design. The research is adapting a qualitative approach that collects and analyses data of projects that used BIM and its capabilities about using design elements database to support decision making for interior spaces and to differentiate between design alternatives. As a result, designers can depend on BIM technology for decision making as a directing tool for environmental impact. Keywords—BIM; Interior design; Design and health; Sustainability. I. INTRODUCTION Sustainability is a common term used today among architects and designers. The most common definition for this term is to meet the need of the present time without affecting the sources and needs for the up-coming generation’s. This definition was presented for the first time in Rio de Janeiro – Brazil for the World Earth Summit by 1992 [1]. Building occupants comfort is an increasing concern as the demand of energy consumption for societies is growing. The reasons mainly are the buildings low - energy performance and energy misuse. Sustainability aims to design the environment of buildings to respect the social, environmental and economic aspects. Despite the role of these three aspects, the research focuses on economic and environmental sides. Considering the relationship between building energy efficiency use and reducing greenhouse gases emissions for the environmental sake. These gases are responsible for global climate change by capturing sun heat, which lead to climatic change and environmental crisis. The growing trend for using BIM (Building Information technology) capabilities in building design and analysis of the building behaviour before even built shall be the key for a new design practices and solutions. BIM has enabled the comparison between multiple alternatives for a more eco-friendly buildings [2]. The environmental product declarations (EPD) that can help designers in choosing their interior products based on the product environmental data is a great step for achieving sustainability [3]. BIMifing these products characteristics and validate them in open formats to be accessible to anyone who plan to use them. Such a step shall ensure maintaining high standards of sustainability. These open sources will also serve the energy analysis process by making accurate analysis based on real market products in addition to that fact that all stakeholders will know the analysis results in order to support decision making on the financial level [4]. II. LITTERATURE REVIEW Buildings consume a lot of energy for heating and cooling purposes, which has a direct effect on the global climate. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 are driven into the earth’s atmosphere causing greenhouse effect. Construction industry is one of the major contributor of greenhouse gasses worldwide. The awareness of designers and owners in the industry is increasing their sector’s importance in reducing greenhouse gases emission by taking further steps to apply saving potential in the industry. Successful sustainable design considers the complete scope of a design lifetime [5]. A green building compensate the deficiencies of architectural designs economically by not focusing only on the building itself but on the building materials and construction technologies too. International sustainability rating systems like BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) which is the first world’s assessment of green building systems in addition to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design) - which has an entire credit category for interior environment - both are dedicated environmental rating systems. LEED includes prerequisites and credits for design and construction projects for the interior spaces and the existing buildings [6]. With the advent of a revolutionary technology such as (BIM), many see it as a promising concept to improve the AEC business by giving information needed for decision- making in building system analysis, planning and also for responsive strategies [7]. BIM is a process that allow managing 3D drawings and project data in a digital, sharable format throughout the life cycle of a building. BIM may increase the efficiency of design and management processes while also informing stakeholders about ongoing projects. BIM as an object-oriented parametric modelling method that incorporates all project data. Even in the early stages of schematic design, the model can estimate the building's performance [8]. This research focuses on using BIM capabilities to analyses energy use and its environmental impact in the following areas. A. Site selection and orientation analysis Building as a unit has an environmental impact and the need for analysis to energy consumption is important for efficient design solution. The aim of the energy consumption analysis is to determine the impact of changing building characteristics on the annual energy consumption rates. The use of energy model simulations will offer architects and 2022 Engineering and Technology for Sustainable Architectural and Interior Design Environments (ETSAIDE) | 978-1-6654-4285-5/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ETSAIDE53569.2022.9906343 Authorized licensed use limited to: Mississippi State University Libraries. Downloaded on February 27,2023 at 06:56:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.