Standards

Using COBIE as an integration interface

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At the meeting of the NIBS FMOC in Baltimore this spring, challenges in expanding the use of COBIE were again at center stage. The National Institute of Building Science (NIBS) is a public-private partnership to advance the identification and resolution of problems and potential problems that hamper the construction of safe, affordable structures. In recent years, one NIBS committee has led efforts to develop a national building information models standard (NBIMS). NBIMS is more than technology, and concerns far more than a 3D building model; BIM it is the basis for re-engineering the processes used in facility design and construction.

The Facilities Maintenance and Operations Committee (FMOC) of NIBS promulgates best practices in building operations. BIM has traditionally focused on initial building cost. Initial cost, though, is only 15 to 20%...

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Easy integration of the Internet with Things: Calendar Subscription and Syndication

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I use Outlook in my day to day life. It shows me an aggregate calendar, with meetings I accept at UNC (one account) meetings I accept not at UNC (anther email account) and two corporate calendars: one based in Exchange, and one in SharePoint. When I was working on the national smart grid roadmap, my Outlook showed the calendar of that SharePoint project as well. In Outlook, I can turn each calendar off or on, and when aggregated, each appointment was a different color by source. I live by Calendar aggregation.

In my Phone, which happens to be an Android, I used to have...

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Podcasting Open Source Smart Energy

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The week before Christmas, I was interviewed by Phil Windley of itconversations.org. The conversation started out about schedules for the internet of things, but was published under the title Open Source Smart Energy. I was coming off a cold, and sounded like a frog croaking, but I enjoyed it, especially because the interview also let me meet Udell, whose work I have long admired. The conversation covered many of the high points of smart energy, including enterprise interaction, demand response, microgrids, and transactive energy.

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Schedule & Commissioning and the Future of LEED

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NREL has recently released a report recommending tagging standards for building systems. This tagging standard is part of a larger recommendation on proper commissioning standards. The same report (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy11osti/50073.pdf) posits that a properly commissioned building system interface be able to offer up a light-weight building model, linked to these standard tags. This creates standard semantics for the building system as a minimum commissioning requirement for a future version of LEED.

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