Linking building data in the cloud: Integrating cross-domain building data using linked data

Within the operational phase buildings are now producing more data than ever before, from energy usage, utility information, occupancy patterns, weather data, etc. In order to manage a building holistically it is important to use knowledge from across these information sources. However, many barriers exist to their interoperability and there is little interaction between these islands of information. As part of moving building data to the cloud there is a critical need to reflect on the design of cloud-based data services and how they are designed from an interoperability perspective. If new cloud data services are designed in the same manner as traditional building management systems they will suffer from the data interoperability problems. Linked data technology leverages the existing open protocols and W3C standards of the Web architecture for sharing structured data on the web. In this paper we propose the use of linked data as an enabling technology for cloud-based building data services. The objective of linking building data in the cloud is to create an integrated well-connected graph of relevant information for managing a building. This paper describes the fundamentals of the approach and demonstrates the concept within a Small Medium sized Enterprise (SME) with an owner-occupied office building. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.