System and Methods for Online Socio-Technical Analysis of Buildings

This invention builds around an online system/service that tries to leverage advancements in Building Information Models (BIM), energy-efficiency simulation tools and online social network analysis methods to enable a data-driven approach to building design, planning, construction and maintenance. The system/service advances the current state of the art by providing an online integrated environment for:

1. Efficient storage, indexing, querying, 3D visualization and exploration of BIMs
2. Sharing BlMs and enabling online collaboration among the various stakeholders
3. Interactive  energy  efficiency  analysis  of  buildings  by  automatically  linking  IFC to  external  energy simulation libraries
4. Interactive analysis of patterns of social interactions and collaboration networks of AEC professionals.