GEIS is a Environmental Interface in Sketchup

Multi-indicators framework for building analysis in early design stage

Slide 1

Features

• Indicator manager
• Indicators can be grouped
• Global weighted indicator
• Simple representation system
• History of changes
• Help system

Indicators & Representation

 Architects should be encouraged to use and understand indicators. The goal is not to optimise a particular indicator, but to link various dimensions of the project. Indicators should form a comprehensive system of analysis that provides an overview of the qualities of buildings.
 What is important in the representation of indicator is to display a trend. An architect prefers to know that an action causes a better or worse result rather than having numbers. Numbers can also be simplified to make them understandable for everyone.

History & Help

 An important element is to keep the project indicators evolution to eventually appreciate its improvement or return to an earlier version. Major changes would thus be seen on a timeline.
 The last part is the simplest, the most obvious, but often the most forgotten. It consists in providing assistance to explain the use of indicators. It should help explain how to understand the indicator and help the architect understand what it does and how to improve his design

Why? :

It has often been seen building in which options chosen from the very beginning influence many aspects of the technical and sustainable results at the end. But when you start working on a project you can't predict much, and when you can predict you can't optimize much. So this project aims to submit a framework that can evaluate a building in early design stage. This framework uses indicators that from a simple volume made in Sketchup, shows only graphical trends in order to decide which path your design should follow. There is still a lack of tools in the usual process, but using sustainable indicators can ease the way you choose options. It doesn't prevent us to conduct an accurate study of the building in the following design phase, but help easily at the very beginning. Everything in this framework has been made to facilitate working process and decision process and future improvements.

Keywords : sustainable, indicator, prediction, process, early design stage, framework