Service Portability and Information Discovery in Building Operating Systems using Semantic Modeling

To achieve cost-efficient IoT based Building Operating Systems (BOS), portable building services are needed. Most previous work has gone into hardware abstraction, while service abstraction has been neglected. This paper presents an information discovery mechanism for BOSs that is based on an ontology which integrates with other semantic models used in the space. The built environment is characterized by extreme heterogeneity; no buildings are entirely alike. Equipment is replaced or updated, control systems and building functionality evolve, as applications, models, forecasters, and controllers improve. For services deployed in such settings to operate at a scale, they must be robust to change. Describing service interfaces using a semantic model, together with the physical context in a building, enables applications to query for their service dependencies. Applications then depend on an abstract query, instead of specific services. For evaluation, nine services running on models of the service ecosystems of three concrete buildings, are implemented, demonstrated, and discussed. Results show services have successfully been made portable and adapts to the changing environments of buildings. Merging and splitting services without code changes to depending services also work as intended, as well as increasing system resilience, by arbitrating similar services.