Geometric data for evaluation of the environmental performance of buildings in Hong Kong in estate or district-wide scales

Evaluation of the performance of building designs in facilitating utilisation of daylight and natural ventilation has to take detailed accounts of the influences of surrounding buildings and terrain. This, in turn, requires three dimensional geometric data for modelling the target building, the adjacent buildings and the nearby terrain. Data for surround buildings and terrain are often compiled from paper maps and supplementary survey data, which can be time and resources intensive. The process can be greatly facilitated by converting digital map data into the format required by various building performance simulation software. The paper describes the method and tools developed for producing such geometric data in a region covered by the digital base map data obtained from the Hong Kong Government. An example application of the data produced for a cluster of buildings to a daylight availability analysis is briefly described.