SEMERGY: Performance-Guided Building Design and Refurbishment within a Semantically Augmented Optimization Environment

Abstract

This contribution illustrates recent efforts in the research project SEMERGY, a computational environment, which incorporates semantic web technologies to support building design and refurbishment optimization. A major part of the necessary information for energy efficient building planning is implicitly available in the World Wide Web. However, this theoretically valuable repository of information cannot be practically used, given its ill-structured nature. SEMERGY addresses this very problem through a number of developments. Specifically, SEMERGY: 1) embeds a comprehensive building data model, 2) incorporates an Ontology for building product data, 3) deploys a rule-based logic for identification of valid building construction alternatives, 4) provides an easy-to-use optimization procedure evaluating energy demand, environmental impact, and investment costs of alternatives, and 5) offers a web-based Graphical User Interface. The present contribution provides a general overview of the whole project and documents the state of its development.