Purpose -The purpose of the paper is to marshal the carbon sources, and explore a computational model to calculate the buildings' carbon emissions by using building information modeling (BIM) techniques. The study aims to integrate the BIM techniques with the carbon emission and energy analysis tools, which can provide a more exact quantification result. Design/methodology/approach -To define the scope of this study, several standards or regulations have been comparatively analyzed. The BIM technique has also been used to establish the computational model of carbon emissions, including the calculation principle, the basic database, and each process of modeling. Finally, a case study is given to test the theoretical study. Findings -The paper provides a quantitative calculation method for the carbon emissions of buildings, and suggests an approach to integrate the BIM techniques with the low carbon research. This allows the quantity of material consumption and carbon emission to be calculated in real time during the whole construction process. Research limitations/implications -Because of the chosen American database, the calculation results may lack generalizability. Therefore, the approach of establishing a universal database of carbon emission coefficients will be the next key point. Practical implications -As this research shows, there is a need for an advanced calculation method to evaluate the buildings' carbon emission exactly by BIM techniques, which also provides a basis to establish the regulation of carbon transaction tax in the future. Originality/value -This paper fulfils an identified need to calculate the carbon emission during the buildings' construction stage, so that better decisions can be made to optimize the construction plan and choose the low emission materials properly.

This study identifies Building Information Modeling (BIM) benefits in the presentations of previous project participants and specialties. Based on recent data, a framework for evaluating the project-level BIM benefits from the perspectives of different stakeholders involved in the project is proposed. In order to maximize the benefits for each user or stakeholder, the functions and methods for implementing BIM on construction projects are explained. The results show that the advantages of implementing BIM in construction projects can be effectively evaluated by the proposed framework. Results presented herein provide documentation to improve the understanding of BIM benefits to all construction industry stakeholders.

The number of large public buildings is growing rapidly in function and complexity, which cause the evacuation path in case of fire to be too long and complex increasing the evacuation time. In this paper, a constraint-based design approach is introduced to automatically generate the optimal position of the building evacuation door to minimize the length of the escape route, thus reducing the evacuation time. The position of the evacuation doors is ruled by design specifications and building structures, in this study,

Life cycle thinking has become widely applied in the assessment for building environmental performance. Various tool are developed to support the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) method. This paper focuses on the carbon emission during the building construction stage. A partial LCA framework is established to assess the carbon emission in this phase. Furthermore, five typical LCA tools programs have been compared and analyzed for demonstrating the current application of LCA tools and their limitations in the building construction stage. Based on the analysis of existing tools and sustainability demands in building, a new computer calculation system has been developed to calculate the carbon emission for optimizing the sustainability during the construction stage. The system structure and detail functions are described in this paper. Finally, a case study is analyzed to demonstrate the designed LCA framework and system functions. This case is based on a typical building in UK with different plans of masonry wall and timber frame to make a comparison. The final results disclose that a timber frame wall has less embodied carbon emission than a similar masonry structure. 16% reduction was found in this study.

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