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The Odysseus dEPC Ontology
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1.1
Introduction
The Odysseus dynamic Energy Profile Card (dEPC) Ontology (or the Odysseus “Energy
Ontology” in short) is an advanced open semantic information structure covering a wide
variety of information types relevant for improved (fossil) energy-efficiency and CO2
reduction in city’s neighbourhoods. The ontology covers entities like buildings where people
perform activities; but also street lighting sections, windmill parks, solar parks etc., all under
the required indoor/outdoor climate conditions. Information aspects distinguished are:
A. Energy: roles, like producing, consuming, storing, transforming, switching &
transporting energy, played by matter:
B. Matter: physical Devices, like sensors, measuring conditions; meters, measuring
(energy and material) flows; and infusors and extractors like the light systems and
radiators, that condition the Spaces:
C. Space: conditioned areas like building spaces in buildings, but also areas in windmill
parks and solar parks. Especially relevant are local device spaces like a gas boiler
grouping devices and a carrier that together convert energy from one form to
another. Besides these infusors/extractors all these spaces are typically also directly
or indirectly influenced by external influences like their boundaries and the climate
behind those boundaries.
These three key aspects (energy, matter and space) and their interconnections are further
detailed in the next sections.
1.2
Energy
An energy network is a set of energy nodes (E-Nodes) and energy connections (EConnections), where each energy connection connects exactly two energy nodes (a start
node and an end node indicating a direction). An energy node, being always of one specific
energy form, comes in four flavours:

E-Consumer nodes, consuming energy

E-Producer nodes, producing energy

E-Storer nodes, storing energy over time

E-Switcher nodes, as logistic nodes, controlling the flows between energy nodes:
blocking certain connections and hereby stopping an energy flow or making the
energy flow take a specific path in case of multiple choices
The energy connections indicate how energy nodes are topologically connected and
determine how energy can flow from one node to another. A positive flow means a flow
from start to end. Energy networks (and their E-Nodes) can have a specific energy form. We
distinguish:
 Electricity
 Gas
 Heat
 Wind
 Solar
 Kinetic
Another energy form means another energy network. One energy node only deals with one
energy form, more energy forms means more/separate energy nodes.
1.3
Matter
Matter can be found on multiple levels of aggregation of which we select two:
 Neighbourhood Level, consisting of Entities like buildings, windmill parks, solar parks
etc., and
 Entity Level, like the Building Level as a special case, consisting of 1) Installations
consisting of a) Devices like appliances or installation parts like infusors (i.e.
radiators) and extractors (i.e. PV-panels), that play E-Production/E-Consumption or
E-Switcher roles and b) physical connections between devices like wires, ducts, and
pipes; but also 2) Carriers playing specifically E-Storer roles.
So, beside energy nodes we also have ‘material nodes’ that have a relevance in energy
management. Sometimes they fulfil one or more energy roles, sometimes they just measure
conditions (sensors) or (energy) flows (meters). We distinguish several kinds of devices:
 Infusors, consuming energy while “increasing” conditions
 Extractors, producing energy while “decreasing” conditions
 Appliances, consuming energy while providing end-user functionalities
 Switchers, controlling logistics
 Exchanger, a device that can both be an infusor or an extractor (typically not at the
same time)
 Sensors and Meters, providing information about conditions and energy flows
respectively
Infusors
Infusors consume energy and transfer it to a form that directly changes (“increases”) the
conditions of areas; to be more precise: the carrier mounted in such area which can be
physical (a medium) or virtual (a contract). The infusors can be seen as the end nodes (the
‘leafs’) from a topological chain of devices. In some way, the ‘weather’ can also be
considered as giant external actuator which is typically hard to manage, playing an
important infusion or extraction role. Nevertheless the weather is modelled separately in
the dEPC assuming to have a global effect on all conditioned areas.
Examples of infusors are:
 Radiators, increasing the temperature of a room,
 LightingSystems, increasing the luminance of a room, and
 Humidifiers increasing the relativeHumidity of a room,
Infusors can be quite local like by a gas burner that is heating a conditioned area embodied
by a gas boiler as device conditioned area.
Extractors
Extractors are ‘inverse infusors’. They produce energy by extraction from conditions of
areas. A good example is a windmill extracting energy from wind speed conditions (in a
sense actuated by the weather). On the local scale of a device a heat exchanger (like a water
spiral) is a good example extracting heat from a local device conditioned area into hot water
energy (heat).
Switchers
Switchers can change/control the flow of energy through the network, typically by blocking
certain connections. An example of a special kind of Switcher is:
 Blinds, decreasing the luminance of a room (‘blocking the energy produced by the
weather’).
Appliances
Appliances just consume energy to provide some function like a dishwasher, laptop or
television. In some way they ‘condition’ the room with functionalities but we kept them
separate from infusors that really change the physical conditions. We also distinguish some
special appliances like an adiabatic cooler that is driven by heat, ‘destroying’ energy to the
weather as external sink. Also an air refresher is an appliance since it does not change the
energy conditions of an area. We modelled currently in dEPC some specific appliances:
"Beamer", "CookingStove", "Dishwasher", "DryingMachine", "Laptop", "Refrigirator",
"Television", "WashingMachine", "AdiabaticCooler", "AirRefreshmentSystem". In the WP6
standardization task we will compare this list with appliance types defined by ETSI1 and
similar standardization efforts in the area of smart appliances.
Switchers
1
European Telecommunications Standards Institute, http://www.etsi.org/
Switchers are the physical devices playing E-Switcher roles like water pumps, manifolds,
blinds, electrical switches etc.
Sensors and Meters
Outdoor climate/weather conditions of the neighbourhood where the entity (like a building)
is located, or indoor climate conditions of rooms can be measured by sensors. The
mentioned actuators of the indoor climate conditions of associated rooms and the
convertors but also other devices like appliances and meters/sensors themselves consume
and/or produce energy. This energy consumption/production can be measured indirectly by
energy meters that are associated to energy flows as signals in energy connections between
energy nodes.
A special case of Signal is a ProfileSignal being a discrete time series of TimePointSignals or
IntervalSignals (being themselves Signals and related to ‘simple’ base or derived quantities
(having units) with a time stamp) where quantities refer to the above mentioned space
conditions and energy node/connection energy properties (consumption, production, flow
etc.).
For each complex property we can optionally indicate:
 valueType: Required, Expected or Measured (default: Measured)

ValueKind: Instant, Incremental, Accumulative, Average, Minimal, Maximal or
Average (default: Instant)

valueOrigin: Asserted or Inferred (default: Asserted)
An entity like a building has zero or more installations each covering max one energy form
like electricity, gas and hot water that consists of zero or more devices. An installation might
also not be dealing with energy like the monitoring installation or the sewer installation. The
hierarchies of the decompositions of the various energy networks for different energy forms
is at entity (like building) level strongly correlated with the energy node interaction of the
energy flows in the energy connections. This makes it possible to state that the energy
consumption of a certain form by a system is always the summation of the energy
consumption of its direct parts (not in a transitive way also including its indirect parts,
otherwise you are counting double, triple etc.). The same its true for the production side of
the picture and the “connection between production and consumption” is always on the
higher aggregation level of the entity’s installation itself.
1.4
Space
Spaces are indoor or outdoor entity-level areas (referred to as rooms) which require, are
expected to have or just really have certain conditions for activities/processes that have to
be performed in them. This is why we refer to them in this context collectively as
‘conditioned areas’. Buildings consist of one or more building spaces as conditioned areas.
Furthermore, buildings can have zero or more (horizontal, vertical or mixed) zones or as we
call them building space groups, that group a minimum of two building spaces. Note that
grouping is not the same as (stronger) decomposition: when a building space group is
deleted, the building spaces are still there; also the building spaces can be ‘part of’ multiple
building space groups.
A conditioned area has a physical medium mounted in it having a set of optional conditions
that together form its indoor/outdoor climate like temperature, relative humidity, CO2 level
and luminance. These conditions are besides all kind of structural/passive factors
determined by external dynamic factors like the climate/weather conditions for the relevant
neighbourhood, dynamic factors (occupation, appliances used) and finally the infusors and
extractors of the various installations playing energy roles.
We have also local, device-level spaces/conditioned areas which are especially relevant
when storing, converting or transforming energy. Some example of such local conditioned
areas:



Buffers, like
o Batteries (electricity > chemical > electricity)
o (Isolated) water tanks (heat > heat > heat)
Convertors, like
o Gas boilers, where the form of energy is converted via for instance gas
burning (actuation of the local conditioned area) and heat exchange to warm
water (extraction from the local conditioned area).
Transformers, like
o Electricity transformer (high <> low voltage)
o Gas Pressure transformer (high <> low pressure)
Transformers are a bit like convertors but now they operate in one type of energy
network (i.e. one energy form). They do not consume or produce energy but only
change its ‘shape’ like high to low temperature, high to low voltage etc.
1.5
Key relationships
Earlier we discussed generic (key) relationships like decomposition (CMO’s hasPart) &
topology (dEPC’s startNode and endNode for modelling E-Connections). Especially in the
dEPC ontology we require other, more specific, relationships to come from one aspect to
another in a dEPC model.
Between energy & matter
 Device ‘playsRoleOf’ zero or more E-Node
 Signal (‘eFlow’) ‘measuredBy’ zero or one Meter
Between matter & space
 Device or Carrier ‘mountedIn’ one ConditionedArea
 Signal (‘condition’) ‘measuredBy’ zero or one Sensor
Between energy & space
 eConsumption and eProduction properties are typically attached to the E-Node
subclass ‘E-Consumer’ resp. ‘E-Producer’. They can be asserted, or derived from
eFlow measurements related to an E-Connection by an (energy) meter.
 We can also attach eConsumption/eProduction etc. to a neighbourhood or even a
city as a whole by querying and aggregating the underlying level.
 Those eConsumption/eProduction together with their form of energy can tell us
about the expected change of conditions in the conditioned areas they are mounted
in.
Energy
 E-Node ‘hasSignal’ zero or more Signal (‘energy subproperties’)
 E-Connection ‘hasSignal’ zero or more Signal (‘energy flows’)
Space
 BuildingGroup ‘groups’ two or more Buildings
 BuildingSpaceGroup ‘groups’ two or more BuildingSpace
 ConditionedArea or Carrier ‘hasSignal’ zero or more Signal (‘conditions’)