A Semantic Decision Support System to optimize the energy use of public buildings

Cities are expected to play a key role in the implementation of Europe 2020 strategy, leading to relevant actions towards energy-efficient neighbourhoods. Although there are plenty of energy data and other related data sets available at the city level, their appropriate integration to support decision making processes for local authorities, still remains a challenge. To fill this gap, a web-based Decision Support System (DSS) has been developed within the framework of the OPTIMUS project to support the decision making process, improving the energy efficiency of buildings, by optimizing the energy use in their premises, and reducing CO2 emissions. In this paper, we presents the semantic framework that has been developed to provide the required interoperability, between the DSS and the different data sources, using Semantic Web technologies. In this framework, the OPTIMUS ontology has been designed to capture and model the information from these data sources. Experimental results derived from the adoption of the ontology are discussed in this paper.