ABSTRACT
An important prerequisite for pervasive data sharing is the availability of a systematic ontology and standardized data formats. However, developers and users of building monitoring systems appear to operate without an explicitly documented, systematic, detailed, and comprehensive ontology. The authors have previously introduced an ontology for the representation and incorporation of multiple layers of occupancy-related monitored building data. Starting from a brief description of this ontology, the present contribution focuses on an effort towards the specifications of a process, by which various streams of monitored data can be mapped onto a unified data format. For this purpose, the potential of Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) is explored, which is open source and suitable for managing data collections of different sizes and complexity. This paper specifically illustrates the suitability of this data format for the structured representation of inhabitants in building performance simulation models.
