Building Information Modeling (BIM) For Sustainable Design Dissertation

Building Information Modeling (BIM) For Sustainable Design - Dissertation Example Introduction 29 5.2. Kiowa County School, Greensburg, Kansas 29 6. Results and Discussion 33 7. References 37 Building Information Modeling for Sustainable Design 1. Chapter One: Introduction 1.1. Impact of Building Construction on Environment Building construction is one of the oldest human activities on the earth. The proverb â€Å"necessity is the mother of invention† probably evoked in human talent for creating a controlled environment in order to moderate the effects of climate. Human beings constructed shelters to adapt themselves to a wide variety of climates (Encyclopedia of Britannica, n.d.). This is how emerged a new activity, which is called building construction. Centuries of development have established three principal characteristics of building construction; design, material, and comfort. The history of evolution of building construction has marked number of trends that are associated with these characteristics. Among them are search for increasing durability of building materials, quest for providing greater height and span to the construction, implementation of innovative approaches to increase the degrees of control over the interior environment of the building as well as the use of more robust machineries in construction (Encyclopedia of Britannica, n.d.). The present state of building construction is the result of many evolutionary processes like agrarian, industrial, and digital. In the process of evolution, the design process of building construction became more and more complicated. At the same time, this process also created a broad range of building products that are categorized according to the building types and markets. Today’s building construction process involves professionals like building product manufacturers, craftsmen, contractors, coordinators, specialized consultants, and quality control personnel. This complex integrated process represents the largest industry in the world. According to United States Environm ental Protection Agency (EPA), in the USA this industry in 2002 consisted of 223,114 establishments representing more than $531 billion in annual revenues. It is no doubt that this complex process provides countless benefit to the society, however; at the same it uses a vast amount of resources. Worldwide construction activities consume three billion tons of raw materials each year; it is 60% of total global use (Dixon, 2010; Ahmed, 2010). Loss of agricultural land to the building is 80% (Dixon, 2010). Total land area in the USA is 2.3 billion acres; urban land area from 1945 to 2002 quadrupled against twofold population growth over the same period (United States Energy Protection Agency, 2009). During the time of 1997 to 2002, rural land use for residential purposes increased by 29% (United States Energy Protection Agency, 2009); no other industry uses more material worldwide than the construction industry (Ahmed, 2010). Per Australian Bureau of statistics building and construction industries use 55% of timber, 27% of plastic products and 12% of iron and steel (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003). Building construction industry on one side consumes enormous natural resources, and on the other side it gives to nature heat and pollution, construction waste, solid waste, sewage and surface drainage. According to EPA (United States Energy Protection Agency, 2009), buildings in the United States produces 38.9% of the nation’s total carbon dioxide emissions; 20.8% from the residential sector and 18.1% from the commercial sector. According to