Towards an Indoor Environmental Quality Management Ontology

Buildings consume one-third of the world’s energy and are some of the major energy consumers on the planet. Occupants use this energy for enhancing indoor environmental quality (IEQ) which is affected by many factors including temperature, humidity, airflow, air quality, etc.; however, it is difficult to find a suitable general solution to improve IEQ while decreasing energy usage as each building is under different environmental conditions, and every occupant has different clothing insulation and a different metabolic rate. In this work, we propose an ontology that, based on real-time data from Internet of Things (IoT), can be used to suggest a viable solution to enhance IEQ and decrease energy usage by combining several sets of knowledge: indoor environmental conditions, outdoor environmental conditions, and occupant profiles. We demonstrated that the ontology with an application can recommend suitable actions to improve IEQ. In future work, this ontology could serve as the foundation on top of which to develop an occupant-centric building automation system for enhancing IEQ and energy efficiency, based on 3D geometric models and thermodynamic simulation modules.