Requirements and Evaluation of Standards for Integration of Sensor Data with Building Information Models

Abstract

Nowadays, many buildings are equipped by Building Automation Systems, which utilize numerous sensors acquiring large amounts of data. Such data is useful to assess the performance of existing building systems and hence to support a variety of decisions made during facility operations and maintenance. However, sensor data alone typically does not support analyses of conditions of a facility since there is a need to understand the context under which data is collected. Therefore, data about sensors, and data collected by sensors and the corresponding spatial contextual information from a building information model are required to be analyzed in an integrated way. Although existing standards provide specifications to represent some aspects of sensor metadata (e.g. SensorML) and building information (e.g. IFC), an approach, which integrates information about sensors and building elements, is still needed. In relation to this, the authors first discuss requirements for a model integrating both sensor metadata and building information and then present possible approaches for developing such a model. The discussions include a synthesis and analyses of existing standards for supporting representation of sensor metadata and building information models, and overview of a prototype implemented to generate integrated models of sensors and building information.