Short Paper: Analyzing Metadata Schemas for Buildings

Commercial buildings account for a large amount of delivered energy in the U.S., nearly 42% of which is consumed in buildings with digital control systems {EIA}. These buildings are a ripe venue to deploy novel applications because of (a) access to sensors and actuators that are used in their digital control systems, (b) deployed wireless sensor networks, and (c) the advent of smart "internet-of-things" sensors. However, these novel applications face a fundamental scalability challenge because the sensor metadata across buildings do not follow any common schema. In this paper, we quantify the shortcomings of three metadata schemas which have gained traction in modeling the contextual, spatial and functional relationships between sensors in the built environment: (1) Project Haystack, (2) Industry Foundation Classes (3) and Semantic Sensor Web against three commercial buildings and an extensive list of smart-building applications.