BIRDS --- Overview
BIRDS - Building Industry Reporting and Design for Sustainablility - allows users to compare the sustainability
performance of a building type as the energy efficiency design of that building type is increased.
In BIRDS, sustainability preformance includes:
- operating energy use
- life-cycle environmental performance of the building's materials, construction, and use
- life-cycle cost performance
In BIRDS, sustainability performance can change with...
- level of energy efficiency
- location
- building prototype
- time horizon
Steps to getting answers to your sustainability questions.
- Begin by telling BIRDS about the kind of building your interested in.
- See how different aspects of sustainability for your building changes as its energy efficiency changes.
- Gain an interactive view of how sustainability performance changes as other key settings like location and time horizon change.
Access an introductory tutorial, documentation, and FAQ at the top right corner of the page.
Step 1: Select Your Building
Select the building prototype you want to evaluate.
Step 2: Select Your Comparisons
Which building settings would you like to compare side-by-side?
Your baseline settings will be used for the reference building in all comparisons.
Step 3: Select Your Environmental Preferences
What are the most important environmental issues to you?
BIRDS includes 12 environmental impact categories for which the user can analyze the environmental performance of a building. BIRDS also allows a user to report a single, weighted average Environmental Impact Score (EIS). In order to calculate the EIS the user must define their preferences, or "weight set," regarding the relative importance of each environmental impact. The user can select one of the pre-defined weight sets or create their own weight set.