The Building Data Exchange Committee was formed to provide an inclusive forum to support the development of tool-agnostic consensus-based data models for the design, analysis, and operational performance of buildings. Our committee members co-author and publish Consensus Documents for Building Data Exchange and participate in related industry forums to encourage open information-sharing in the development of pertinent data infrastructure for buildings. The approved purpose and scope are reproduced below:

Purpose

  1. provide an inclusive forum to collaboratively support tool-agnostic data exchange through the development of consensus-based data models for the design, analysis, and operational performance of buildings; and
  2. participate in related industry forums and standards committees to encourage open information-sharing in the development of pertinent data infrastructure for buildings.

Scope

This committee can – 

  1. periodically distribute surveys to identify key barriers to developing a cohesive data ecosystem for multiple use cases throughout a building’s life-cycle;
  2. organize webinars for industry stakeholders to demonstrate their data models and solicit feedback from end-users, software developers, and others; and
  3. facilitate the authoring and publishing of Consensus Documents with standard data models for specific applications in building design, analysis, and operation.

The committee currently has four working groups:

  • Data Modeling: Developing a common framework and vocabulary for discussing and developing data models and data schemas
  • Climate Information: Facilitating the development of consensus data model(s) to represent climate information for building design, analysis, and operation
  • Compliance and Certification:  Improving the efficiency of sharing Building Performance Simulation (BPS) data with administrators of compliance and certification programs.
  • BIM to BEM: Inform other BDE working groups, including the Data Models and Compliance and Certification Reporting by focusing on the architectural aspects of BIM to BEM translation. The working group will document the findings in a consensus document prepared by the group’s core members and in collaboration with a larger group consisting of BEM and BIM professionals as well as software and schema developers.