A decision-making framework opted for smart building's equipment based on energy consumption and cost trade-off using BIM and MIS

Development of Building Information Modelling (BIM) is assisting engineers with automating design/construction processes in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. Lack of such a comprehensive decision-making framework which utilizes BIM, Management Information Systems (MIS), simulation, and automation tools to choose between different construction alternatives have been addressed in the research background. As an example of decision-making objective, optimized smart building's equipment combination for a certain project should be selected in the feasibility study phase. In this research, a comprehensive decision-making framework was developed to choose smart building's equipment based on energy consumption and cost trade-off. Subsequently, smart building alternatives were considered as a decision-making example to choose the best alternative using BIM, MIS and simulation tools. The research contributes to the automating of some parts of the decision-making framework by developing an Application Programming Interface (API). This API helps with making the appropriate automating permutation out of possible options, totalizing the cost of each combination and sorting data in the research database developed for the recommended framework. This framework, database and API can be used similarly for any other decision making objective. Finally, a model representing the average conditions of residential buildings in Tehran was developed to choose the optimized smart building's equipment combination of 31 considered options. This optimized combination which included all possible smart building options except for smart lighting has an investment return of about 7.5 years which is more than that of similar projects in other countries due to Iran's low energy carrier tariff.