Integrating Heterogeneous Building and Periphery Data Models at the District Level: The NIM Approach

TL;DR

This paper presents the NIM approach, a meta model-based method for integrating diverse building and neighborhood data models at the district level to enhance interoperability and data exchange.

Contribution

It introduces the Neighborhood Information Model (NIM) with a meta model approach, enabling runtime extension and easy integration of heterogeneous data models through a mapping DSL.

Findings

NIM supports flexible data model integration.

The approach facilitates interoperability among diverse data sources.

Implementation demonstrates effective data exchange at district level.

Abstract

Integrating existing heterogeneous data models for buildings, neighbourhoods and periphery devices into a common data model that can be used by all participants, such as users, services or sensors is a cumbersome task. Usually new extended standards emerge or ontologies are used to define mappings between concrete data models. Within the COOPERaTE project a neighbourhood information model (NIM) has been developed to address interoperability and allow for various kinds of data to be stored and exchanged. The implementation of the NIM follows a meta model based approach, allowing for runtime extension and for easily integrating heterogeneous data models via a mapping DSL and code generation of adaptation components.