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Big Building Data - a Big Data Platform for Smart Buildings

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Lucy Linder
Lucy Linder
Lucy Linder
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Damien Vionnet
Damien Vionnet
Damien Vionnet
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Bacher Jean-Philippe at University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland
Bacher Jean-Philippe
Jean Hennebert at University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland
Jean Hennebert
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Future buildings will more and more rely on advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) connected to a variety of sensors, actuators and dedicated networks. Their objectives are to observe the state of rooms and apply automated rules to preserve or increase comfort while economizing energy. In this work, we advocate for the inclusion of a dedicated system for sensors data storage and processing, based on Big Data technologies. This choice enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications development, the most obvious one being the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of smart areas and smart cities. We report in this paper on our system architecture and on several challenges we met in its elaboration, attempting to meet requirements of scalability, data processing, flexibility, interoperability and privacy. We also describe current and future end-user services that our platform will support, including historical data retrieval, visualisation, processing and alarms. The platform, called BBData - Big Building Data, is currently in production at the Smart Living Lab of Fribourg and is offered to several research teams to ease their work, to foster the sharing of historical data and to avoid that each project develops its own data gathering and processing pipeline.
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ScienceDirect
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
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ScienceDirect
Energy Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
1876-6102 © 2017The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling.
The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling
Assessing the feasibility of using the heat demand-outdoor
temperature function for a long-term district heat demand forecast
I. Andrića,b,c*, A. Pinaa, P. Ferrãoa, J. Fournierb., B. Lacarrièrec, O. Le Correc
aIN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research -Instituto Superior Técnico,Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
bVeolia Recherche & Innovation,291 Avenue Dreyfous Daniel, 78520 Limay, France
cDépartement Systèmes Énergétiques et Environnement -IMT Atlantique, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44300 Nantes, France
Abstract
District heating networks are commonly addressed in the literature as one of the most effective solutions for decreasing the
greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector. These systems require high investments which are returned through the heat
sales. Due to the changed climate conditions and building renovation policies, heat demand in the future could decrease,
prolonging the investment return period.
The main scope of this paper is to assess the feasibility of using the heat demand –outdoor temperature function for heat demand
forecast. The district of Alvalade, located in Lisbon (Portugal), was used as a case study. The district is consisted of 665
buildings that vary in both construction period and typology. Three weather scenarios (low, medium, high) and three district
renovation scenarios were developed (shallow, intermediate, deep). To estimate the error, obtained heat demand values were
compared with results from a dynamic heat demand model, previously developed and validated by the authors.
The results showed that when only weather change is considered, the margin of error could be acceptable for some applications
(the error in annual demand was lower than 20% for all weather scenarios considered). However, after introducing renovation
scenarios, the error value increased up to 59.5% (depending on the weather and renovation scenarios combination considered).
The value of slope coefficient increased on average within the range of 3.8% up to 8% per decade, that corresponds to the
decrease in the number of heating hours of 22-139h during the heating season (depending on the combination of weather and
renovation scenarios considered). On the other hand, function intercept increased for 7.8-12.7% per decade (depending on the
coupled scenarios). The values suggested could be used to modify the function parameters for the scenarios considered, and
improve the accuracy of heat demand estimations.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and
Cooling.
Keywords: Heat demand; Forecast; Climate change
Energy Procedia 122 (2017) 589–594
1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference – Future Buildings &
Districts – Energy Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale
10.1016/j.egypro.2017.07.354
10.1016/j.egypro.2017.07.354
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientic committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference – Future Buildings &
Districts – Energy Efciency from Nano to Urban Scale
1876-6102
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy Efficiency from
Nano to Urban Scale, CISBAT 2017 6-8 September 2017, Lausanne, Switzerland
Big Building Data - a Big Data Platform for Smart Buildings
Lucy Lindera, Damien Vionnetb, Jean-Philippe Bacherb, Jean Henneberta,∗
aInstitute of Complex Systems, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
bInstitute of Energy, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
Abstract
Future buildings will more and more rely on advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) connected to a variety of sensors,
actuators and dedicated networks. Their objectives are to observe the state of rooms and apply automated rules to preserve or in-
crease comfort while economizing energy. In this work, we advocate for the inclusion of a dedicated system for sensors data storage
and processing, based on Big Data technologies. This choice enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications
development, the most obvious one being the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of
smart areas and smart cities. We report in this paper on our system architecture and on several challenges we met in its elaboration,
attempting to meet requirements of scalability, data processing, flexibility, interoperability and privacy. We also describe current
and future end-user services that our platform will support, including historical data retrieval, visualisation, processing and alarms.
The platform, called BBData - Big Building Data, is currently in production at the Smart Living Lab of Fribourg and is offered to
several research teams to ease their work, to foster the sharing of historical data and to avoid that each project develops its own
data gathering and processing pipeline.
c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings &
Districts Energy Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Keywords: Big Data; Building Management Systems; Smart Buildings; Web of Buildings;
1. Introduction
Concerns about climate change have triggered the need for more sustainable and dynamic energy management
systems. This is especially true for the building sector, which accounts for about 20% of the energy consumed
worldwide [1].
The standardisation of building sensors, for example through IoT technologies, and their coupling to smarter con-
trol systems are forming the basis of Smart Buildings, providing new ways for the owners, operators and facility
managers to improve both the reliability and performances of building assets. Research wise, smart control systems
are intensively investigated with the objectives to save energy and at the same time increase the comfort level. Exam-
ples of smart controls are promising, reporting savings from 10% for simple controls up to 60% for the most advanced
∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +41-26-429-6596
E-mail address: jean.hennebert@hefr.ch
1876-6102 c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy
Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy Efficiency from
Nano to Urban Scale, CISBAT 2017 6-8 September 2017, Lausanne, Switzerland
Big Building Data - a Big Data Platform for Smart Buildings
Lucy Lindera, Damien Vionnetb, Jean-Philippe Bacherb, Jean Henneberta,∗
aInstitute of Complex Systems, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
bInstitute of Energy, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
Abstract
Future buildings will more and more rely on advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) connected to a variety of sensors,
actuators and dedicated networks. Their objectives are to observe the state of rooms and apply automated rules to preserve or in-
crease comfort while economizing energy. In this work, we advocate for the inclusion of a dedicated system for sensors data storage
and processing, based on Big Data technologies. This choice enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications
development, the most obvious one being the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of
smart areas and smart cities. We report in this paper on our system architecture and on several challenges we met in its elaboration,
attempting to meet requirements of scalability, data processing, flexibility, interoperability and privacy. We also describe current
and future end-user services that our platform will support, including historical data retrieval, visualisation, processing and alarms.
The platform, called BBData - Big Building Data, is currently in production at the Smart Living Lab of Fribourg and is offered to
several research teams to ease their work, to foster the sharing of historical data and to avoid that each project develops its own
data gathering and processing pipeline.
c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings &
Districts Energy Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Keywords: Big Data; Building Management Systems; Smart Buildings; Web of Buildings;
1. Introduction
Concerns about climate change have triggered the need for more sustainable and dynamic energy management
systems. This is especially true for the building sector, which accounts for about 20% of the energy consumed
worldwide [1].
The standardisation of building sensors, for example through IoT technologies, and their coupling to smarter con-
trol systems are forming the basis of Smart Buildings, providing new ways for the owners, operators and facility
managers to improve both the reliability and performances of building assets. Research wise, smart control systems
are intensively investigated with the objectives to save energy and at the same time increase the comfort level. Exam-
ples of smart controls are promising, reporting savings from 10% for simple controls up to 60% for the most advanced
∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +41-26-429-6596
E-mail address: jean.hennebert@hefr.ch
1876-6102 c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy
Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy Efficiency from
Nano to Urban Scale, CISBAT 2017 6-8 September 2017, Lausanne, Switzerland
Big Building Data - a Big Data Platform for Smart Buildings
Lucy Lindera, Damien Vionnetb, Jean-Philippe Bacherb, Jean Henneberta,∗
aInstitute of Complex Systems, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
bInstitute of Energy, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
Abstract
Future buildings will more and more rely on advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) connected to a variety of sensors,
actuators and dedicated networks. Their objectives are to observe the state of rooms and apply automated rules to preserve or in-
crease comfort while economizing energy. In this work, we advocate for the inclusion of a dedicated system for sensors data storage
and processing, based on Big Data technologies. This choice enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications
development, the most obvious one being the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of
smart areas and smart cities. We report in this paper on our system architecture and on several challenges we met in its elaboration,
attempting to meet requirements of scalability, data processing, flexibility, interoperability and privacy. We also describe current
and future end-user services that our platform will support, including historical data retrieval, visualisation, processing and alarms.
The platform, called BBData - Big Building Data, is currently in production at the Smart Living Lab of Fribourg and is offered to
several research teams to ease their work, to foster the sharing of historical data and to avoid that each project develops its own
data gathering and processing pipeline.
c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings &
Districts Energy Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Keywords: Big Data; Building Management Systems; Smart Buildings; Web of Buildings;
1. Introduction
Concerns about climate change have triggered the need for more sustainable and dynamic energy management
systems. This is especially true for the building sector, which accounts for about 20% of the energy consumed
worldwide [1].
The standardisation of building sensors, for example through IoT technologies, and their coupling to smarter con-
trol systems are forming the basis of Smart Buildings, providing new ways for the owners, operators and facility
managers to improve both the reliability and performances of building assets. Research wise, smart control systems
are intensively investigated with the objectives to save energy and at the same time increase the comfort level. Exam-
ples of smart controls are promising, reporting savings from 10% for simple controls up to 60% for the most advanced
∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +41-26-429-6596
E-mail address: jean.hennebert@hefr.ch
1876-6102 c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy
Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy Efficiency from
Nano to Urban Scale, CISBAT 2017 6-8 September 2017, Lausanne, Switzerland
Big Building Data - a Big Data Platform for Smart Buildings
Lucy Lindera, Damien Vionnetb, Jean-Philippe Bacherb, Jean Henneberta,∗
aInstitute of Complex Systems, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
bInstitute of Energy, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
Abstract
Future buildings will more and more rely on advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) connected to a variety of sensors,
actuators and dedicated networks. Their objectives are to observe the state of rooms and apply automated rules to preserve or in-
crease comfort while economizing energy. In this work, we advocate for the inclusion of a dedicated system for sensors data storage
and processing, based on Big Data technologies. This choice enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications
development, the most obvious one being the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of
smart areas and smart cities. We report in this paper on our system architecture and on several challenges we met in its elaboration,
attempting to meet requirements of scalability, data processing, flexibility, interoperability and privacy. We also describe current
and future end-user services that our platform will support, including historical data retrieval, visualisation, processing and alarms.
The platform, called BBData - Big Building Data, is currently in production at the Smart Living Lab of Fribourg and is offered to
several research teams to ease their work, to foster the sharing of historical data and to avoid that each project develops its own
data gathering and processing pipeline.
c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings &
Districts Energy Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Keywords: Big Data; Building Management Systems; Smart Buildings; Web of Buildings;
1. Introduction
Concerns about climate change have triggered the need for more sustainable and dynamic energy management
systems. This is especially true for the building sector, which accounts for about 20% of the energy consumed
worldwide [1].
The standardisation of building sensors, for example through IoT technologies, and their coupling to smarter con-
trol systems are forming the basis of Smart Buildings, providing new ways for the owners, operators and facility
managers to improve both the reliability and performances of building assets. Research wise, smart control systems
are intensively investigated with the objectives to save energy and at the same time increase the comfort level. Exam-
ples of smart controls are promising, reporting savings from 10% for simple controls up to 60% for the most advanced
∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +41-26-429-6596
E-mail address: jean.hennebert@hefr.ch
1876-6102 c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy
Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy Efficiency from
Nano to Urban Scale, CISBAT 2017 6-8 September 2017, Lausanne, Switzerland
Big Building Data - a Big Data Platform for Smart Buildings
Lucy Lindera, Damien Vionnetb, Jean-Philippe Bacherb, Jean Henneberta,∗
aInstitute of Complex Systems, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
bInstitute of Energy, HEIA-FR, Boulevard de Perolles 80, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
Abstract
Future buildings will more and more rely on advanced Building Management Systems (BMS) connected to a variety of sensors,
actuators and dedicated networks. Their objectives are to observe the state of rooms and apply automated rules to preserve or in-
crease comfort while economizing energy. In this work, we advocate for the inclusion of a dedicated system for sensors data storage
and processing, based on Big Data technologies. This choice enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications
development, the most obvious one being the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of
smart areas and smart cities. We report in this paper on our system architecture and on several challenges we met in its elaboration,
attempting to meet requirements of scalability, data processing, flexibility, interoperability and privacy. We also describe current
and future end-user services that our platform will support, including historical data retrieval, visualisation, processing and alarms.
The platform, called BBData - Big Building Data, is currently in production at the Smart Living Lab of Fribourg and is offered to
several research teams to ease their work, to foster the sharing of historical data and to avoid that each project develops its own
data gathering and processing pipeline.
c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings &
Districts Energy Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Keywords: Big Data; Building Management Systems; Smart Buildings; Web of Buildings;
1. Introduction
Concerns about climate change have triggered the need for more sustainable and dynamic energy management
systems. This is especially true for the building sector, which accounts for about 20% of the energy consumed
worldwide [1].
The standardisation of building sensors, for example through IoT technologies, and their coupling to smarter con-
trol systems are forming the basis of Smart Buildings, providing new ways for the owners, operators and facility
managers to improve both the reliability and performances of building assets. Research wise, smart control systems
are intensively investigated with the objectives to save energy and at the same time increase the comfort level. Exam-
ples of smart controls are promising, reporting savings from 10% for simple controls up to 60% for the most advanced
∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +41-26-429-6596
E-mail address: jean.hennebert@hefr.ch
1876-6102 c
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CISBAT 2017 International Conference Future Buildings & Districts Energy
Efficiency from Nano to Urban Scale.
Smart Cities (Urban Simulation, Big Data)
590 Lucy Linder et al. / Energy Procedia 122 (2017) 589–594
2Lucy Linder /Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
systems. Smart controls are addressing the different sources of consumptions in buildings such as heating, cooling,
ventilation, electric lighting and solar shadings [2], lightning [3], electric appliance [4], etc. We observe that such
technologies will rely more and more on the gathering of large amounts of data from multiple sensors, actuators and
dedicated networks.
The handling of Smart Building data is challenging in many ways. First, the building automation domain has a long
history with interoperability problems due to the diversity of systems and technologies [5], leading to interoperability
and integration concerns [6]. Second, the density of sensors and actuators as well as the sensing frequency tend to
increase for a finer observation and control of the equipments, leading to large quantities of data to process. As an
example, in Project Dasher, the database reached its limits after only three months and the collection of 2 billion rows
of data [7]. Third, advanced control, monitoring and post occupancy evaluation are relying on more and more complex
models using both real-time and historical data, as well as aggregations and correlations in the range of several years.
While real-time and time-aggregation processing have received a renewed attention and many frameworks try to
address those needs, none of them are currently fully mature [8]. Finally, while the coupling between the IoT and the
Big Data is strong, there are few comprehensive approaches to support the collection of data from building sensors to
their exploitation. Current research efforts are mainly focusing on the collection of data from the data producer tiers,
the reception tiers or the exploitation one [9].
In the BBData project, we attempt to answer those challenges by providing a full-featured data processing platform
for Big Building Data. BBData is an ingestion, processing and sharing system able to scale up to the Big Data
expectations of Smart Building environments. The project is an applied research contribution of HEIA-FR in the
context of the Smart Living Lab in Fribourg. Still in the earlier stages of development, it has been running continuously
for several months to gather data from more than two thousands sensors located at the Halle Bleue of the BlueFactory
site.
Section 2 presents a general overview of the BBData platform. Subection 2.1 shows how Big Data technologies
changed the landscape of Smart Building solutions. Subsection 2.2 presents the architecture of BBData, as well as the
technologies that support it. In section 3, we review some of the challenges of big data and how we met them in our
solution. In section 4, we present some key features of BBData and how Building professionals could benefit from it.
2. System description
2.1. From BMS to Web of Buildings
In this work, we rely on the inclusion of a dedicated system for the storage and processing of sensors data equipping
smart buildings. More specifically, the architecture of this system is remote, de-coupled and based on Big Data
technologies. This choice enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications development, the most
obvious one being the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of smart
areas and smart cities. More than a simple evolution of Building Management Systems (BMS), such open Big Data
architectures are probably an important paradigm shift from BMS to what is called Web of Buildings [10].
As illustrated on the left part of Figure 1, traditional Building Management Systems (BMS) are standalone soft-
wares running on a server located in the premises of a building. Standard BMS includes three levels of functions:
(1) the field layer is made of sensors and actuators connecting to the physical word; (2) the automation layer applies
strategies derived from a set of rules and parameters; (3) the management layer configures and manages the other lay-
ers. BMS usually offer limited capacities in terms of sensor data storage and act as isolated systems often unreachable
from the outside.
The right part of Figure 1 illustrates our BBDATA architecture with the inclusion of remote solutions for storage
and data processing. More than the ability of scaling up at the level of a city, this approach brings new opportunities in
terms of BMS evolution through the de-coupling of sensors, data storage and applications levels. This opening is sup-
ported by the emergence of the open and standardised principles of the Internet of Things and Web of Things [11][12].
It allows for seamless integration of new data sources, such as weather forecasts available in web services or mobile
sensors. It also allows for shorter application development cycles, enabling for example mashup approaches as in
modern web application development. Finally, the availability of long term historical data allows to use advanced
mathematical models and machine learning technique [13].
Lucy Linder et al. / Energy Procedia 122 (2017) 589–594 591
Lucy Linder /Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000 3
Management
Field
Automation
storage
Processing
Field
Field
Field
Applications
Applications
Applications
monitoring / controlnetworks of sensors cloud / Big Data platforms
Fig. 1. On the right, a traditional BMS architecture; On the left, a Web of Buildings architecture.
2.2. The BBData architecture
Figure 2 shows the journey of a measure in the BBData system. In (1), different kind of sensors produce measures.
Those sensors might come from different manufacturer and use various data encodings. To ensure the compatibility of
the platform with any kind of equipment, BBData uses the concept of virtual objects. A virtual object has metadata,
such as name, unit and type and can be mapped to a real sensor through an ID. This mapping is handled by collec-
tors (2). A collector creates a bbdata record for each measure and sends it to the input api in a structured JSON format.
In case some sensors lack an internal clock, the collector can also produce a timestamp. The input api (3) is a JavaEE
REST service running on GlassFish1whose role is to validate the incoming measure and ensure its authenticity using
the object’s ID and a secure token. If the check succeeds, security informations are dropped and the resulting JSON is
added to an Apache Kafka2message queue (4) for processing. The content of this queue is also dumped periodically
to HDFS, so the raw inputs can be replayed anytime. Before processing, the measure is first ”augmented” with the
virtual object’s metadata pulled from a MySQL3database (5). The result is stored in a second message queue using a
compressed format (6).
In BBData, processing covers a wide area of tasks. It goes from the saving of raw values into a persistent store
to the detection of anomalies or the computation of time aggregations. Each of these tasks is handled by a specific
processor. Processors are independent streaming applications running in a hadoop cluster. They subscribe to the
augmented Kafka topic, carry their task and save their output, if any, in a Cassandra database. This design makes it
possible to add or remove processors without any impact on the system. We have currently two kind of processors,
both implemented with Apache Flink4: the first saves the raw records to Cassandra, the second one computes live
time aggregates (mean, max, last measure, standard deviation) with a granularity of fifteen minutes, one hour and one
day.
Users and building automation applications can access the data and manage virtual objects through a standard
REST interface called the output api (7) or via HTML5 web applications.
3. Big Data: challenges and pitfalls
The potential of Big Data technologies is undeniable. However it raises many challenges when it comes to design
a sustainable and efficient data ecosystem. First, even if Hadoop is a de-facto standard in the Big Data landscape, it
is made of many components distributed on multiple machines. The maintenance of such system is rather intensive
1https://glassfish.java.net/
2https://kafka.apache.org/
3https://www.mysql.com/
4https://kafka.apache.org/
592 Lucy Linder et al. / Energy Procedia 122 (2017) 589–594
4Lucy Linder /Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
raw
INPUT API
augmentation
(ßink)
processors
(ßink)
metadata
(MySQL)
values
(Cassandra)
OUTPUT API
augmented
1
2
3
4
567
8
Fig. 2. Architecture of BBData: the journey of a measure
and the learning curve is steep. Second, the technology landscape in Big Data is fast evolving and improvements
are constant, especially in the analytics domain. With our BBData system, we had to and we still are compromising
between stabilising our environment and incorporating the latest techniques, sometimes questioning initial choices in
front of emerging Big Data design patterns. We can report here on two examples we faced while designing BBData
and that are specific to the storage and processing of building data.
At the storage level, NoSQL databases are compromising between consistency (C), availability (A) and partition
tolerance (P), known as the CAP theorem [14]. It has been revised since to include latency in the equation [15]. Our
choice of using Apache Cassandra was motivated by its good reported performance as an AP database and also by the
fact we could reach good consistency with a proper configuration. But this performance comes at a cost: the supported
queries are tightly dependent on the data model. Such scalable databases use the notion of shards that are partitions
of the data on different nodes. A given data will be stored in a given shard according to a user defined strategy. In
BBData, we privileged a fair distribution of the data on several shards using as distribution key the object’s id and the
timestamp’s year and month. This ensures data are well-balanced between nodes, but also limits our queries to those
where the object id and the time period are known. Moreover, since measures from different month are potentially
stored on different machines, the wider the time range, the less the performance.
At the processing level, our focus on building data and energy management requested the ability to compute
time-based aggregations on streams. While aggregations are relatively common needs, the main stream-processing
frameworks such as Apache Spark, Flink and Kafka Streams are still looking for satisfying general solutions. In our
case, we needed aggregations based on timestamps embedded in the data and also that the time advanced differently
for each virtual object. This conjonction of requirements are not supported by any framework yet. As a result, we had
to implement our own tool to offer on-the-fly time aggregations to our users.
4. User services
BBData can offer many tools to different types of user. It includes the building user, the building owner, the
architects and the engineering consultancies. The first set of tools is related to data monitoring. At the building user
point of view, these tools offer access to live monitoring, to historic data and to different type of pre-calculated values.
The data monitoring is also useful to the architects and the engineering consultancies. Presently, these two actors have
access to few information once the building is in operation. A data monitoring service would be a real added value
for them. Such a service allows to understand the behavior of the building and the behavior of the occupants. From
the observed behaviors, the engineering consultancies are able to do post-occupancy evaluation and optimization to
reduce the energy consumption and/or improve the user satisfaction [16][17]. Figure 3 illustrates a potential for energy
savings based on correlating door sensors and lighting consumption. For the architects, they can use this information
to build best practice guides and to enrich their experience for the next constructions.
Building owners have also expressed their interest for other types of services. The first one is the ”anomaly
detection” [18]. By taking advantage of data history, it is possible to identify data patterns that define the standard
Lucy Linder et al. / Energy Procedia 122 (2017) 589–594 593
Lucy Linder /Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000 5
Fig. 3. Post occupancy optimization: modify lighting automation to save energy after the last person leaves the office
behavior of the building and its users. By comparing these patterns to the current state (see Figure 4), discrepancies
can be detected automatically and alerts can be triggered, for example a maintenance alert. Based on the same idea,
a predictive maintenance can be developed. Like patterns for standard building behaviors, it is possible to define
patterns from the occurred anomalies and associate to them metadata such as the equipment or user behavior causing
the anomaly and the way the issue was solved. If one of these anomalies arise one more time, the BBData system
could detect it and suggest the right issue resolution. These different services are not yet provided by the BBData
system but are under development.
Fig. 4. Standard pattern vs. abnormal pattern - Simulated data
We are also currently developing a third set of tools useful to the building owner for planning building renovation
and comparing the performances of different buildings. These tools are able to compute yearly building energy
signatures and environmental CO2eq footprints. With such tools, the building owner can compare the current state
versus the previous year and check if the established action plan has any effect. Prediction models will also be included
based on the current state and on historical data for the rest of the year [19].
5. Conclusion and future work
In this paper, we presented the BBData platform, a distributed system for storing and processing building data.
Based on Big Data technologies, the platform enables new potentials in terms of data analytics and applications
development, with the ability to scale up seamlessly from one smart building to several, in the direction of smart
areas and smart cities. We detailed the architecture of the system and the different technological choices we made by
describing the journey of a data emitted from a sensor and going trough the modules of the system. We then reviewed
some of the challenges we met setting up the platform, some of them being related to classical constraints of Big Data
environments. We finally described several services, existing and under development, that leverage on BBData and
that are dedicated to building users, owners, architects and managers.
594 Lucy Linder et al. / Energy Procedia 122 (2017) 589–594
6Lucy Linder /Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000
In our future work, we plan to further develop end-user services such as alarms based on advanced anomaly detec-
tion and prediction. Other areas of development will go in the direction of multivariate stream processing including,
for example, time aggregations on a group of objects or correlations between streams.
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Consistency Tradeoffs in Modern Distributed Database System Design: CAP is Only Part of the Story
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The CAP theorem's impact on modern distributed database system design is more limited than is often perceived. Another tradeoff—between consistency and latency —has had a more direct influence on several well-known DDBSs. A proposed new formulation, PACELC, unifies this tradeoff with CAP.
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Perspectives on the CAP Theorem
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Almost twelve years ago, in 2000, Eric Brewer introduced the idea that there is a fundamental trade-off between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. This trade-off, which has become known as the CAP Theorem, has been widely discussed ever since. In this paper, we review the CAP Theorem and situate it within the broader context of distributed computing theory. We then discuss the practical implications of the CAP Theorem, and explore some general techniques for coping with the inherent trade-offs that it implies.
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On the Adaptation of Building Controls to the Envelope and the Occupants
  • D Daum
Daum, D.. On the Adaptation of Building Controls to the Envelope and the Occupants. Ph.D. thesis; ENAC; Lausanne; 2011. doi:10.5075/epflthesis-4935.