These sessions, which take place after the keynote lectures in the morning of the 19th and 20th of June (wednesday and thursday), focus on current research and developments on linked building data, with the following presentations:

Wednesday 19 June (10:45 - 12:45)

• A method for converting IFC geometric data into GeoSPARQL

• Joseph Donovan, Declan O’sullivan and Kris McGlinn
• Abstract: Geographic Information System (GIS) data can provide important contextual information relevant to buildings design, such as related to flooding, orientation, and even construction materials. Currently there is a disconnect between 2D GIS and 3D Building Information Modelling (BIM), as both tend to work from different geometric representations and coordinate systems, meaning seamless integration of these representations is difficult. This paper presents a method for converting Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) geometries into GeoSPARQL based upon the IFC defined geolocation.
  The goal is to align these geometries with their GIS equivalents, so that an existing IFC model can be overlaid with GIS, or vice versa. This will allow for the seamless movement from a geospatial representation of a building to its BIM equivalent. It will also make possible the precise geolocation of building elements in existing BIM models. To support the publication of this data, the paper presents an export of the resulting GeoSPARQL aligned with the developing standard the Building Topology Ontology (BOT), thus enabling the linking of multiple geometric representations to a single building reference model. A short evaluation of the performance of the algorithm for conversion is also presented.

• Querying heterogeneous linked building datasets with context-expanded GraphQL schemes

• Jeroen Maurits Werbrouck, Madhumitha Senthilvel, Jakob Beetz and Pieter Pauwels
• Abstract: Linked Data in the construction industry is a topic gaining serious interest over the last years. However, this interest remains largely academic and has not sparked much adoption of web technologies in the field. To nourish adoption of Linked Data in practice, access to the data has to be made more easy. SPARQL, the recommended RDF query language, has proven very powerful for retrieving and updating RDF datasets. However, due to its verbosity and complexity, it is often considered a threshold for developers to implement in their tools.
  In this paper, we compare SPARQL with Linked Data querying languages that extend the GraphQL syntax: HyperGraphQL and GraphQL-LD. Since it went open source in 2015, GraphQL has been adopted by a large community of developers, partly due to its elegance and conciseness. As a use case, the queries are performed on an RDF-based multimodel that relies on the recent ISO standard ICDD (ISO 21597). ICDD interlinks information on a sub-document level, based on OWL. It is aimed at the industry in that it adds a layer of Linked Dat to documentation formats that are still widely used in practice: IFC, spreadsheets, imagery etc. Therefore, it is considered a tuned use-case for comparing these different query languages.

• Automated Ontology Matching in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Domain - A Case Study

• Georg Ferdinand Schneider
• Abstract: The ontology-based modelling of the built environment is deemed promising to successfully integrate disparate knowledge silos and has gained significant attraction. This interest has led to a increasing number of domain ontologies resulting again in a lack of interoperability issues when dealing with these models. The manual definition of schema level alignments of different domain ontologies to integrate this domains is a tedious task. Hence, this paper explores the possibilities to use existing automated ontology matching tools. The results of the utilised tools are compared to manually created ones. The initial findings show that the use AlignmentMakerLight tool is in principle capable in reporting correct alignments.

• Developing the Crowd Simulation Scenario (CSS) ontology supporting building evacuation design

• Calin Boje
• Abstract: The ontology-based modelling of the built environment is deemed promising to successfully integrate disparate knowledge silos and has gained significant attraction. This interest has led to a increasing number of domain ontologies resulting again in a lack of interoperability issues when dealing with these models. The manual definition of schema level alignments of different domain ontologies to integrate this domains is a tedious task. Hence, this paper explores the possibilities to use existing automated ontology matching tools. The results of the utilised tools are compared to manually created ones. The initial findings show that the use AlignmentMakerLight tool is in principle capable in reporting correct alignments.

Thursday 20 June (10:45 - 12:45)

• An ontological model for the representation of damage to constructions

• Al-Hakam Hamdan, Mathias Bonduel and Raimar Scherer
• Abstract: In this paper the Damage Topology Ontology (DOT) is presented, a web ontology that provides terminology to represent constructionrelated damages and their topology as well as relations to aected construction elements and zones. Besides the topology, classes and properties for documentation management and a minimal structural assessment have been proposed in DOT. In this regard, DOT provides all classes and properties needed for practical use in construction inspections and damage assessment. The ontology is developed to be used with the modular Linked Building Data ontologies structure, where DOT works as core damage ontology which can be extended with multiple modules related to detailed damage classication, damage assessment, mechanical degradation and other application scenarios. Geometrical damage representations are separated from the topology, so that it is possible to initially record damages during the inspection without any geometrical properties and link it later with a corresponding representation using terminology from geometry-related ontologies.

• Integration of environmental data in BIM tool & Linked Building Data

• Justine Flore Tchouanguem Djuedja, Pieter Pauwels, Henry Abanda Fonbeyin, Camille Magniont, Mohamed Hedi Karray and Bernard Kamsu Foguem
• Abstract: Environmental assessment is a critical need to ensure building sustainability. In order to enhance the sustainability of building, involved actors should be able to access and share not only information about the building but also data about products and especially their environmental assessment. Among several approaches that have been proposed to achieve that, semantic web technologies stand out from the crowd by their capabilities to share data and enhance interoperability in between the most heterogeneous systems. This paper presents our method and its implementation for a use case. Semantic web technologies and particularly Linked data have been combined to Building Information Modelling (BIM) to foster building sustainability by introducing products with their environmental assessment in building data during the modelling phase. Based on Linked Building Data (LBD) vocabularies and environmental data, several ontologies have been generated in order to make both of them available as Resource Description Framework (RDF) graphs. A database access plugin has been developed and installed in a BIM tool. In that way, the LBD generated from the BIM tool contains, for each product, a reference to its environmental assessment which is contained in a triplestore.

• Integrating Building and IoT data in Demand Response solutions

• Iker Esnaola-Gonzalez and Francisco Javier Diez
• Abstract: DR (Demand Response) programs have a big potential in the residential sector to reduce peak energy demands. However, the poor user-engagement is one of the main barriers of their adoption and success. The RESPOND H2020 project aims to bring DR programs to neighbourhoods across Europe and in this article, focus is placed on the approach implemented to solve the challenging integration of building topological data and data produced by IoT systems within houses including sensors, meters and actuators. In this regard, RESPOND leverages Semantic Technologies to represent building data, while it uses Time Series Databases (TSDB) to store IoT data. The combination of these technologies is expected to enhance the data querying, which is of utmost importance for its display in the RESPOND mobile app.

• BPO: The Building Product Ontology for Assembled Products

• Anna Wagner and Uwe Rüppel
• Abstract: With the current trend of using Linked Data to describe buildings during their entire lifecycles, the importance of product descriptions in a Semantic Web context is growing while most product ontologies are designed for mass-produced goods of little variance. But especially in the construction industry, products are often innovative and individually manufactured and previous attempts to depict them with ontologies failed to include meaningful alignments to already existing approaches.
  Thus, this paper gives an overview of existing product ontologies in general and analyses previous approaches in more detail to identify potential improvements that can be made. Based on this analysis, this paper presents the Building Product Ontology (BPO), including its concepts and alignments. To obtain a modular ontology, the BPO focuses on the non-geometric description without defining templates by determination of taxonomies and includes concepts to model assembly structures, interconnections of components, and complex properties and property values. The BPO enables manufacturers to freely model their products while still benefitting from the Semantic Web in respects of findability and availability of product data. By going through the given examples and demonstrations, inexperienced users are supported to apply the BPO and exploit its benefits.