SolConPro: Describing multi-functional building products using semantic web technologies

The research project Solar Construction Processes (SolConPro) focusses on developing new methods to facilitate planners in integrating solar active facade components, e. g. Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) and Building Integrated Solar Thermals (BIST), into the building processes. The decisive feature of such components is that they reunite product properties from multiple product categories and therefore cannot be assigned to a specific category, such as static component or technical building equipment. Well-established product exchange standards within the construction industry such as ICF, simple ifcXML or VDI 3805 are not suitable to cover the wide-ranging properties of multi-functional components. In order to provide a comprehensive digital representation of such components and to enable the integration within the methodology of Building Information Modelling, the following paper presents a data schema based on Semantic Web Technologies. The designed multi-layered ontology enables and supports interpretability the wider use of Semantic Web technologies in the construction industry.