1. Semantic Web for Energy
Malcolm Murray

2. The Semantic Web
• Basically an evolution of the World Wide
Web.
• Concept introduced by Tim Berners Lee in
1999.
• Extends the scope of the World Wide Web
to manage data.

3. Semantic Web Layers
Existing WWW
Technology
Mature Sem
Web
Technology
In Development /
Research

4. RDF
• The Unifying Language of the Semantic Web.
• Based on XML.
• Consists of Triples
– <Subject> <Predicate> <Object>
– <http://greenspaceresearch.co.uk/Greenspace>
hasLab <http://greenspaceresearch.co.uk/EVSL>

5. Ontology Example

6. SPARQL
…
PREFIX dbont: <http://dbpedia.org/ontology#>
SELECT *
WHERE { ?country a <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/Country>;
rdfs:label "United Kingdom"@en.
OPTIONAL {?country <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/abstract> ?abstract.}.
OPTIONAL {?country dbpedia2:capital ?capital.}.
OPTIONAL {?country dbpedia2:currencyCode ?currency.}.
OPTIONAL {?country dbpedia2:populationEstimate ?popest.}.
OPTIONAL {?country dbpedia2:gdpNominalPerCapita ?gdpnominal.}.
OPTIONAL {?country dbpedia2:regionalLanguages ?regional_language.}.
FILTER (lang(?abstract) = "en")
}

7. SPARQL Example

8. Linked Open Data

9. Example Applications
Google investing
in the Sem Web

10. Relevance to Energy and
Built Environment
• Semantic Web Efforts seem to
focus round select domains.
• Energy and built environment
not really one of those areas.
• But does have a large amount
of information that could be
better managed.

11. • Semantic Web based platform representing
building and energy related information.
• Currently a proof of concept developed by
Greenspace Research.
• gbXML based ontology along with others.
• New way of organising building information.
SWEEP

12. SWEEP

13. SWEEP

14. SWEEP

15. • Future developments will include integration
with more data sources.
• Will bring energy supply and demand
together.
• Import weather data.
• Interface with sensors and controllers.
SWEEP

16. • Regional and Trans National case
studies generating large amounts of
data.
• This data needs to be disseminated
to stakeholders etc.
• Semantic Web Solution may be
useful for this.
• Prototype currently in development.
SUSPLAN Knowledge Base

17. SUSPLAN Data Input

18. SUSPLAN Server

19. SUSPLAN Client

20. SUSPLAN Client

21. SUSPLAN Client

22. Summary
• The Semantic Web is potentially very
powerful in the energy domain.
• But needs to be accessible – usability is
important.
• Crowd sourcing is the only feasible way to
populate databases on a large scale.

23. Summary
• Security is a major issue for some datasets –
particularly building related.
• Semantic Web work is ongoing, has exciting
potential, but requires a lot more work.
• Semantic Web developments really kicking
off now – next couple of years will be
interesting!!!

24. Thanks For Listening!
Any Questions?