The Building Data Genome Directory -- An open, comprehensive data sharing platform for building performance research

TL;DR

The Building Data Genome Directory is an open platform aggregating diverse building datasets to support energy research and decarbonization efforts worldwide.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, curated online portal consolidating various building data types with detailed subcategories and granularities, facilitating research and data sharing.

Findings

Aggregated 60 datasets from multiple sources.

Includes diverse data types like energy, water, weather, and images.

Features crowdsourcing for dataset contributions.

Abstract

The building sector plays a crucial role in the worldwide decarbonization effort, accounting for significant portions of energy consumption and environmental effects. However, the scarcity of open data sources is a continuous challenge for built environment researchers and practitioners. Although several efforts have been made to consolidate existing open datasets, no database currently offers a comprehensive collection of building data types with all subcategories and time granularities (e.g., year, month, and sub-hour). This paper presents the Building Data Genome Directory, an open data-sharing platform serving as a one-stop shop for the data necessary for vital categories of building energy research. The data directory is an online portal (http://buildingdatadirectory.org/) that allows filtering and discovering valuable datasets. The directory covers meter, building-level, and aggregated community-level data at the spatial scale and year-to-minute level at the temporal scale. The datasets were consolidated from a comprehensive exploration of sources, including governments, research institutes, and online energy dashboards. The results of this effort include the aggregation of 60 datasets pertaining to building energy ontologies, building energy models, building energy and water data, electric vehicle data, weather data, building information data, text-mining-based research data, image data of buildings, fault detection diagnosis data and occupant data. A crowdsourcing mechanism in the platform allows users to submit datasets they suggest for inclusion by filling out an online form. This directory can fuel research and applications on building energy efficiency, which is an essential step toward addressing the world's energy and environmental challenges.