Impact of the U.S. National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS) on Building Energy Performance Simulation

The U.S. National Institute for Building Sciences (NIBS) started the development of the National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS). Its goal is to define standard sets of data required to describe any given building in necessary detail so that any given AECO industry discipline application can find needed data at any point in the building lifecycle. This will include all data that are used in or are pertinent to building energy performance simulation and analysis. This paper describes the background that lead to the development of NBIMS, its goals and development methodology, its Part 1 (Version 1.0), and its probable impact on building energy performance simulation and analysis.