Information modeling in heterogeneous Building Automation Systems

Modern Building Automation Systems (BAS) are highly heterogeneous where often a plethora of technologies is necessary to satisfy the needs of all underlying application domains. On the way to “intelligent” buildings and smart control, a key challenge to be solved is interoperability at the information level. In order to use data in a technological-independent way, it must be possible to represent and access them in a generic way. One opportunity is to use the information modeling concepts provided by OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). Therefore, this paper is dedicated to information modeling of BAS using OPC UA. First, it is shown how interworking models of the open standards BACnet, KNX, LonWorks and ZigBee can be mapped to OPC UA. As a proof-of-concept, a management application based on the proposed OPC UA information models bridging the technologies BACnet and KNX is presented.