IBPSA-CH, the newly created regional affiliate of IBPSA for Switzerland, hosted on 19 October 2006 in Geneva a software presentation of so-called “Ecobilans” programs.

These are programs that generally help an organisation assess its social and environmental impact. The programs that were presented were Ecoentreprise, Green-E and Eco-Bat. They all try to solve the same problem but from different perspectives. Eco-Bat, for instances, is exclusively focused on a building’s environmental impact throughout its whole life-cycle.

Two of them were server-based, the third was a standalone program. All can be tried in a demo version. I will not endorse here any of these programs, only note their existence. It is refreshing for me to see that simulation is slowly but surely gaining a foothold in Switzerland, although I have yet to see an integrated building simulation program being widely diffused in this country.