Automatic setup of fault detection algorithms in building and home automation

The complexity and diversity of building automation systems (BAS) and the various faults that may happen in buildings make it very challenging to set up fault detection and diagnostics (FDD). This knowledge-intensive, expensive tasks urgently needs to be automated due to the limited time and budget available in this domain. A novel approach for computer-aided, automatic setup of FDD for BAS is described in this paper. Using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), the characteristics, requirements and necessary configuration of the FDD algorithms are formally specified in a machine-interpretable way. Also buildings and their BAS are described by OWL as building information model (BIM). Given these descriptions, the approach can match the specific characteristics and requirements of the FDD algorithms with the specific circumstances in the BAS in a formal evaluation process. All applicable FDD algorithms can be determined and subsequently configured to the individual characteristics of the BAS.