OPM: An Ontology-Based Package Manager for Building Operating Systems

The energy sector is experiencing new challenges with the move to green energy. One of these challenges is keeping a stable energy grid when transitioning the production to unpredictable energy generation from green sources. Demand Response (DR) can mitigate some of the lack of predictability by influencing the consumer's load profile. Unfortunately, the cost of implementing DR, and the required infrastructure, vastly overshadows the benefits for the consumer, thereby negating the incentive to invest. Therefore, reducing the initial cost of investment is a critical factor for the success of DR. Building Operating Systems (BOS) is one possible avenue to achieve DR functionality in buildings. This paper seeks to reduce initial investment costs of BOSes, by introducing an ontology-based package manager (OPM), that dynamically resolves dependencies and installs services. An ontology-based approach to dependency resolution allows for loosely defined dependencies but also takes the context of the service into account, as well as requirements in terms of sensor availability and physical layout of the building. The OPM is evaluated by deploying a BOS and accompanying services for occupancy prediction. By significantly reducing deployment complexity, results show considerable time savings, and thereby cost reductions, on deployment and maintenance activities.