BEMServer: An Open Source Platform for Building Energy Performance Management

Abstract

In the era of new technologies and with the growing need for reliable ecological energy supplies, researchers eyes are diverted towards reducing the energy consumption of buildings which becomes a major concern that requires a variety of actors being involved (e.g., building owners, energy/facility managers, occupants, data scientist), who have different expertise and need to use different tools This paper introduces BEMServer, an open source Build- ing Energy Management system solution built to ease the integration of data analytic and visualization services into building and energy domain applications. It handles heterogeneous data in a transparent way by providing a clear and unambiguous semantic representation of the modeled resources. To do so, BEMServer integrates the OntoH2G formal ontology at its core. The architecture of BEM- Server, the design and use of OntoH2G in the solution, as well as the suitability of BEMServer as a middleware in the H2020 project Hit2Gap are described