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UGR, member of the EiT project, develops an extension for Building Information Models that supports imprecise knowledge management

The Building Information Model (BIM) is a three-dimensional representation of the conceptual elements of a building –floors, walls, windows, etc.–, their properties, and the relations among them. The BIM has become a key tool to achieve successful communication between the agents involved in the building life-cycle (architects, contractors, owners, facility managers, etc.), since it provides a visual and centralized information repository. Open standards for encoding BIM data, such as the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), have contributed to expand its adoption, but they have limited capabilities for cross-domain information integration and query.

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To address these challenges, the Linked Building Data initiative promotes the use of Semantic Web technologies in order to create more interoperable BIMs. The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which the contents of documents are described with computable languages; for example, we can explicitly represent that “Don Quijote” is a “novel” (a kind of “book”), and that it is authored by “Miguel de Cervantes”. These data resources can be linked in a similar fashion as we do with documents in the web; for example, we can say that our “Don Quijote” is the same resource explained in the Wikipedia entry for “Don Quijote de la Mancha”.  Such knowledge representations are called ontologies.

Based on their previous research work on the management of imprecise information in ontologies, the UGR research team participating in the Energy IN TIME project has proposed an extension of the semantic BIM that allows: (a) using natural language terms to describe building elements, such as ‘big’, ‘similar’, or ‘near’; and (b) querying the system in these same terms to retrieve, for instance, all the elements with size around a dimension value, or those that have been built with similar materials. This approach is based on Fuzzy Logic, a mathematical framework that allows machines to process statements that hold to a degree in the [0, 1] interval rather than being completely true or false, like in “the window is small with degree 0.8” (which means that the window can be considered quite small).

Specifically, the UGR team has created an expressive fuzzy ontology language to expand the capabilities of the Semantic Web version of the IFC standard, and has documented how to use a fuzzy reasoning engine in a BIM context with selected examples. This reasoning engine, named DeLorean (DEscription LOgic REasoner with vAgueNess), has been developed in collaboration with researchers of the University of Zaragoza. The resulting fuzzy semantic BIM enables new functionalities in the building design and analysis stages —namely, soft integration of cross-domain knowledge, flexible BIM query, and imprecise parametric modelling.

More information.

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The Swedish Energy Agency has just begun the “Intelligent Energy Management Challenge” in NineSights.com

The main purpose of the Challenge is to find innovative solutions that manage the energy infrastructure of a building with the objective to increase the self consumption of solar energy produced in a building.

 

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A maximum of 4 participants will be awarded € 10,000, alongside with the opportunity to discuss with the local energy authorities in order to create pilot spaces where it will be able to test the results of the project.

If the pilot project inspires interest in other regions, it will be awarded up to € 50,000 for each municipality. Successful pilot projects can result in supplier negotiations for up to € 2.800.000 with the participating Swedish Municipalities for 2016-2020.

This project emerges after the worldwide fall in prices of solar cells, which has brought the use of this technology from specialized enterprises to the final consumer, who is able to produce and consume his/her own energy.

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Thus, participants are asked to create innovative pilot projects which are capable to be implemented in a domestic environment, to reduce the homes reliance on the main electrical network and to encourage self-consumption in a simple and friendly way. It will be specially valued the project’s capacity to provide diverse energy benefits to its users, as well as a flexibility that may allow to increase the project’s capacity or to establish further uses.

This competition is an excellent opportunity to promote the collaboration between public entities in order to encourage new energy efficiency policies in Sweden

 

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Energy IN TIME will participate in Sustainable Places 2015, in Savona (Italy)

Energy IN TIME will participate, for the third consecutive year, in the annual International Conference Sustainable Places 2015 that will take place from September 16 to 18 on the University Campus of Savona (Italy).

Sustainable Places 2015 is an initiative from the European Project RESILIENT and PERFORMER FP7. It comes to its 3rd edition with the aim of bringing together scientists, researchers, engineers, and institutes of research and industry to address one of the biggest challenges of our society: to ensure, in the long time, environmental sustainability in urban areas, in a world with limited resources.

In this spirit, during the different conferences, a series of workshops will take place to discuss about energy efficiency in the design of the buildings, districts and cities, in which Energy IN TIME will participate.

Related links:

EiT Meeting in Bucharest

The 3rd Energy IN TIME Steering Committee meeting was held at Romanian partner ICPE’s headquarters in Bucharest on the 20th and 21st of May. The building where the meeting was held is one of four demo sites of the Energy IN TIME project, bringing to a total of three the demo sites that have been visited by the consortium to coincide with project meetings, the previous being Faro airport in Portugal, and the Sanomatalo Building in Helsinki.

As usual, the meeting kicked off with a guided tour of the facilities and a presentation by hosts ICPE. The four storey, multi-purpose building houses both offices and laboratories, and has a number of unique features, including a photovoltaic facade. Approximately one third of the 17.400m2 building will be used to demonstrate the Energy IN TIME solution.

Noticia3_1The rest of the meeting was dedicated to working sessions for all the work packages in progress, with particular emphasis being placed on the comments and suggestions made by the Project Officer in his 18 month report.

Not all was hard work though, and hosts ICPE treated the rest of the partners to a social dinner at the Lacrimi si Sfinti (“Tears and Saints”) restaurant in Old Town Bucharest, where we got a taste, not only of the local cuisine, but also of a bit of Romanian culture and history. The owner of this emblematic restaurant is the charismatic Romanian poet, journalist and revolutionary Mircea Dienscu, who played a prominent part in the Romanian revolution of 1989 and now produces his own wines for his restaurant and occasionally drops by to entertain his guests.

After a tiring but productive two days in sunny Bucharest, the Energy IN TIME partners went their separate ways until after the summer, when the next meeting will take place in Barcelona, Spain.