Re-use of an ontology for modelling urban energy systems

Abstract

The use of ontologies for the interoperability of software models is widespread, with many applications also in the energy domain. By formulating a shared data structure and a definition of concepts and their properties, a language is created that can be used between modellers and—formalised in an ontology—between model components. When modelling energy systems, connections between different infrastructures are critical, e.g. the interaction between the gas and electricity markets or the need for various infrastructures including power, heat, water and transport in cities. While a commonly shared ontology of energy systems would be highly desirable, the fact is that different existing models or applications already use dedicated ontologies, and have been demonstrated to work well using them. To benefit from linking data sources and connecting models developed with different ontologies, a translation between concepts can be made. In this paper a model of an urban energy system built upon one ontology is initialised using energy transformation technologies defined in another ontology, thus illustrating how this common perspective might benefit researchers in the energy domain.