An integrated framework utilising software agent reasoning and ontology models for sensor based building monitoring

Abstract

Smart building monitoring demands a new software infrastructure that can elaborate building domain knowledge in order to provide advanced and intelligent functionalities. Conventional facility management (FM) software tools lack semantically rich components, and that limits the capability of supporting software for automatic information sharing, resource negotiation and to assist in timely decision making. Recent hardware innovation on compact ZigBee sensor devices, software developments on ontology and intelligent software agent paradigms provide a good opportunity to develop tools that can further improve current FM practices. This paper introduces an integrated framework which includes a ZigBee based sensor network and underlying multi-agent software (MAS) components. Several different types of sensors were integrated with the ZigBee host devices to produce compact multi-functional sensor units. The MAS framework incorporates the belief-desire-intention (BDI) abstraction with ontology support (provided via explicit knowledge bases). The different software agent types have been developed to work with sensor hardware to conduct resource negotiation, to optimize battery utilization, to monitor building space in a non-intrusive way and to reason about its usage through real time ontology model queries. The deployed sensor network shows promising intelligent characteristics, and it has been applied in several on-going research projects as an underlying decision making service. More applications and larger deployments have been planned for future work.

Keywords:

• multi-agent system (MAS)
• belief-desire-intention (BDI)
• ontology
• building management system (BMS)
• domain knowledge
• ZigBee sensor unit

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Dibley

Michael DIBLEY. Dr, has recently completed his PhD (An Intelligent System for Facility Management, 2011) in Cardiff University, Engineering School. He now works in BRE Institute of Sustainable Engineering, Engineering School, Cardiff University as a Research Associate. His research interest relates to sensor development, sensor based building monitoring, ontology development, and multi-agent system.

Haijiang Li

Haijiang LI. Dr, a Lecturer (Engineering Informatics & Structural Applications) working in the BRE Institute of Sustainable Engineering, Engineering School, Cardiff University. His main research interest lies on Advanced and Innovative Computing supported large scale systems integration and decision making. It covers Building Information Modelling (BIM) based AEC systems integration, High Performance Computing & Cloud Computing, ontology development and multi-agent systems, intelligent building monitoring sensor system etc., which have been applied into large scale infrastructure modelling, sustainable design and development, adaptable buildings, robust & resilient building design, life cycle infrastructure integration, knowledge management, intelligent computing for building energy simulation, virtual reality and visualization.

Yacine Rezgui

Yacine REZGUI. Prof., the Director of the BRE institute of sustainable engineering. He has successfully completed over 20 national (TSB /EPSRC, WAG) and European projects. He is currently involved in the FP7-2011-NMP-ENV-ENERGY -ICT-EeB KnowholEM project (285229) which delivers optimized ontology-based building energy management solutions. His expertise includes ontology engineering, service-based computing, multi-agent systems, and building energy. He has published extensively in the above areas, including a newly edited book (Rezgui and Miles, 2011 – Spon).

John Miles

John MILES. Is a Professor in Engineering Informatics. He was the former institute head, and his expertise lies on conceptual engineering design, engineering optimization.