Autodesk and NASA Ames Research Center have announced a collaboration to research and develop new technology that can monitor and optimize the operational life-cycle of high performance buildings. Researchers from Autodesk Research and NASA will implement Autodesk Project Dasher technology at the NASA Ames Sustainability Base, a 50,000 square foot office building and showcase for technologies enhancing efficient resource utilization, including those developed by NASA for its space and aeronautics missions. Autodesk Project Dasher is an experimental Building Information Modeling (BIM) based platform that can provide building owners and operators with insight into full life-cycle real-time building performance.
With its specialized sustainability features, and because it was designed in-part using Autodesk software for BIM, the NASA Ames Sustainability Base was an ideal choice for this research project. On-site power generation from photovoltaics and a solid oxide fuel cell provide more electricity than the facility requires and contribute excess capacity to the NASA Ames local grid. Sustainability Base also uses landscape design solutions, remediated ground water, and water reclaimed using NASA technology designed to reduce its potable water footprint by 90 percent when compared to a traditional building of comparable size.
Autodesk Project Dasher is designed to provide the interactive building management capabilities that will enable the on-going optimization of facility function that is critical in high performance buildings. Autodesk researchers are currently engaged with NASA Ames architects, planners, researchers, and facilities engineers to develop and test the visualization and analytical tools inside Project Dasher to better address the gap between design and operations.