Data structuring for the ontological modelling of urban energy systems: The experience of the SEMANCO project

Semantic web technologies can help to integrate heterogeneous data sources, and to make them accessible to the stakeholders involved in the urban energy planning. In the SEMANCO project, semantic technologies have been used to create models of urban energy systems able to assess the energy performance of an urban area. A semantic energy information framework brings together the data sources at different scales and from different domains (e.g. urban planning, energy management), as well as some energy simulation and assessment tools that interact with the semantically modelled data. An ontology based on a vocabulary of concepts shared by experts has been created through the following process: capturing the experts knowledge about a specific problem regarding the energy efficiency of an urban area and the data needed to model it; creating an informal vocabulary through the terms referred to technical standards, and creating a formal vocabulary according to the Ontology Web Language specifications. This ontology has been applied to three case studies in the SEMANCO project. The ontology can be reused in other cases dealing with modelling of urban energy systems using semantic technologies and its underlying methodology - knowledge capturing, informal vocabulary creation, ontology building - could be replicated in other domains.