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Main Authors: Qiang, Zhangcheng, Hands, Stuart, Taylor, Kerry, Sethuvenkatraman, Subbu, Hugo, Daniel, Omran, Pouya Ghiasnezhad, Perera, Madhawa, Haller, Armin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14374
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author Qiang, Zhangcheng
Hands, Stuart
Taylor, Kerry
Sethuvenkatraman, Subbu
Hugo, Daniel
Omran, Pouya Ghiasnezhad
Perera, Madhawa
Haller, Armin
author_facet Qiang, Zhangcheng
Hands, Stuart
Taylor, Kerry
Sethuvenkatraman, Subbu
Hugo, Daniel
Omran, Pouya Ghiasnezhad
Perera, Madhawa
Haller, Armin
contents Ontologies play a critical role in data exchange, information integration, and knowledge sharing across diverse smart building applications. Yet, semantic differences between the prevailing building ontologies hamper their purpose of bringing data interoperability and restrict the ability to reuse building ontologies in real-world applications. In this paper, we propose and adopt a framework to conduct a systematic comparison and evaluation of four popular building ontologies (Brick Schema, RealEstateCore, Project Haystack and Google's Digital Buildings) from both axiomatic design and assertions in a use case, namely the Terminological Box (TBox) evaluation and the Assertion Box (ABox) evaluation. In the TBox evaluation, we use the SQuaRE-based Ontology Quality Evaluation (OQuaRE) Framework and concede that Project Haystack and Brick Schema are more compact with respect to the ontology axiomatic design. In the ABox evaluation, we apply an empirical study with sample building data that suggests that Brick Schema and RealEstateCore have greater completeness and expressiveness in capturing the main concepts and relations within the building domain. The results implicitly indicate that there is no universal building ontology for integrating Linked Building Data (LBD). We also discuss ontology compatibility and investigate building ontology design patterns (ODPs) to support ontology matching, alignment, and harmonisation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_14374
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Systematic Comparison and Evaluation of Building Ontologies for Deploying Data-Driven Analytics in Smart Buildings
Qiang, Zhangcheng
Hands, Stuart
Taylor, Kerry
Sethuvenkatraman, Subbu
Hugo, Daniel
Omran, Pouya Ghiasnezhad
Perera, Madhawa
Haller, Armin
Information Retrieval
Systems and Control
Ontologies play a critical role in data exchange, information integration, and knowledge sharing across diverse smart building applications. Yet, semantic differences between the prevailing building ontologies hamper their purpose of bringing data interoperability and restrict the ability to reuse building ontologies in real-world applications. In this paper, we propose and adopt a framework to conduct a systematic comparison and evaluation of four popular building ontologies (Brick Schema, RealEstateCore, Project Haystack and Google's Digital Buildings) from both axiomatic design and assertions in a use case, namely the Terminological Box (TBox) evaluation and the Assertion Box (ABox) evaluation. In the TBox evaluation, we use the SQuaRE-based Ontology Quality Evaluation (OQuaRE) Framework and concede that Project Haystack and Brick Schema are more compact with respect to the ontology axiomatic design. In the ABox evaluation, we apply an empirical study with sample building data that suggests that Brick Schema and RealEstateCore have greater completeness and expressiveness in capturing the main concepts and relations within the building domain. The results implicitly indicate that there is no universal building ontology for integrating Linked Building Data (LBD). We also discuss ontology compatibility and investigate building ontology design patterns (ODPs) to support ontology matching, alignment, and harmonisation.
title A Systematic Comparison and Evaluation of Building Ontologies for Deploying Data-Driven Analytics in Smart Buildings
topic Information Retrieval
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14374