Review Comment:
The paper describes DogOnt for supporting AEC/FM processes, in particular, energy profiles for both electrical and thermal consumption. It is difficult to determine from the conclusion what the contribution is though beyond what was presented in 2008 (one of the few papers referenced). It highlights changes to DogOnt, but it is not exactly clear what these are. The paper mentions many times changes to the original 2008 version of DogOnt, but no references are provided.
The SoA is also lacking. There is barely any mention of existing standards for BIM, like IFC (mentioned only in reference to SAREF). While this in itself is not necessarily a criticism, the paper does refer to other ontologies, like SAREF, but doesn’t really explain what the differences are between it and DogOnt, why DogOnt is a better choice, or why DogOnt has not examined the ontologies that were examined in the development of SAREF. Overall, this leaves the reader with the sense that the ‘Overview’ of related work is more of a snapshot, and is incomplete.
The description of DogOnt is good, and explains well its capabilities. There are some more specific comments (see below) that could be further explored, or explained, if one is to back the claim that DogOnt can be applied beyond just the smart home. Also, many uses of DogOnt are referred to, changes made over the years. Without references though these claims cannot be substantiated. For these to be convincing, examples of the use of DogOnt should be provided.
The paper does also provide a simple methodology for using DogOnt. I would like this explored in greater detail. This could be very useful for persons who wish to use DogOnt. It would need to be tied to specific domains and stakeholders though, as I can imagine the range of tasks will vary depending on these. This highlights another concern in the paper. A clear definition of the target users is never given here (perhaps this is available in the 2008 paper?)
There are multiple spelling and grammar mistakes in the paper. I have listed a few at the bottom.
Specific Comments
Abstract
-> Abstract mentions stakeholders...are sensors considered stakeholders?
Section 1 Introduction
Far too few references!
‘At the same time and for each level, it should take into account both electrical and thermal consumptions, and gather these information from a plethora of different stakeholders (i.e., citizens, utilities, policy makers, and energy providers) and heterogeneous sensors.’
o Are sensors stakeholders? Please provide a reference.
‘Among the available initiatives, the most renowned encompass the Linked Open Data (LOD) initiative, acting at the application level, the Semantic Sensor Web initiative, which aims at addressing, at least partially, the diversity of sensors and sensors data, and the Semantic Big Data research field aiming at tackling the data cardinality and heterogeneity issue.’
o Hard to parse this sentence. Please rework, and provide some references. SSW is abbreviated later.
‘Linked Open Data (LOD) provides machine understandable, shared and open semantics for representing a wide set of knowledge domains in the world. Rather than focusing on a single, rigid and practically not scalable representation model, the LOD approach integrates more than 295 datasets1 with over 31 billions of triples representing real data, from personal e-mail contacts to world nations, from medical topics to plane parts.’
o How is the LOD approach different from singular representation models? I think I understand what is trying to be said here, but the sentence could be worded better. Please clarify.
‘One of the most important results of the SSW initiative is the Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology, defined by the W3C SSN XG group which was active from 2009 to 2011 [1]’
o I would update your reference…why refer to the working group? - https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-ssn/
‘The Semantic Big Data initiative’
o Reference!
‘Current modeling approaches and initiatives, however, are too general for the energy context (e.g., SSW) or too specific, since they aim at modeling each level and domain separately.’
o References!, which approaches/initiatives are too specific?
‘In the past eight years, it evolved to tackle representation issues emerging from residential, building, and factory automation solutions. Lately, it included primitives for dealing with distributed networks of sensors deployed as part of smart buildings. Nowadays, DogOnt empowers several research projects needing uniform, semantic access to environment sensors and actuators and successfully supports abstraction of several standards including both Internet of Things (e.g., ZigBee) and non-IoT (e.g., Modbus) technologies.’
o Sounds great, but please reference each piece of work, along with projects DogOnt is being used in.
Section 2 Overview on AEC/FM modelling
‘This need is currently acknowledged by several research efforts, both industrial and academic, which aim at building domain ontologies to model energy consumption and performance. In the energy domain, ontologies are employed to define shared and common inter-language for performance evaluation, energy rating, device consumption profiling, etc. Approaches present in the literature, typically, address the energy domain by splitting the analysis along different forms of energy, i.e., electrical and thermal. On the one hand, this division permits to tackle the specificity of the single energy form and the related engineering domains. On the other hand, it prevents a structured and comprehensive approach to energy representation, at higher levels of detail, like at the district level.’
o References
Section 2.1 Electrical Sub-domain
PowerONT
o This was developed by the author. Maybe this should be made explicit.
SAREF
o This is built upon the analysis of over 23 assets, which include PowerONT and DogOnt. I see MIRABEL and also ThinkHOME mentioned. Would be good to see some awareness of the other ontologies analysed by SAREF, and their relation to DogOnt.
Section 2.3 City and District
No mention of CityGML for district modelling? Again, feeling that this section is incomplete as an ‘overview’, more a snapshot.
Section 3 DogOnt
3.1 Overview
‘In the past years, it underwent several reviews and amendments, and its scope was widened to include devices and technologies typically part of an indoor IoT network.’
o Would be good to again see references, evidence of these extensions
3.2 Device, Environment Modelling
These sections are well explained, reflecting the capabilities of the ontology
For environment modelling though, is there any way of locating devices other than the room they are in, and can rooms be broken into zones, or sub spaces? (Unlike homes, some rooms can be fairly large in offices and factories, what if a sensor is on the ceiling in a corner of one of these spaces?).
3.3 Modelling Walk through
This methodology is important. Giving people clear guidelines how to use an ontology, would really help. Could this process be captured graphically though, perhaps as a BPMN or activity diagram? Might help to make decision points clearer.
“As a general hint, in this phase, the more quick approach to browsing is “reasoning” by systems: the plug is part of a general electric system /plant, and it is something that can be controlled.”
o Could you explain what is meant by reasoning in this context? Is this automated (or intended to be)?
‘The same simplification is applied to graphical representation where the containing room is represented by omitting related concepts, such as walls, floor and ceiling, etc.’
o How are the rooms represented graphically using contains relationships? Is there a coordinate system? I may have missed something here.
Section 5 Conclusion
‘'last edition of DogOnt'
o Should this read 'latest', or 'most recent'? Could explicitly say what the 'latest modification' to DogOnt is in conclusion.
'Proposed mappings' –
o perhaps reword as 'The proposed mappings'
'Additional efforts are needed to explicitly address policy regulations for the energy market, as this aspect is crucial for the successful exploitation of ontology based energy profiling.'
o This is the first time policy regulations are mentioned (other than as users in the abstract). This needs to be addressed in the paper, if it is important with respect to the work presented.
Spelling/Grammar
There are quite a few grammar and spelling mistakes. Here are a few:
‘Differently from the initial modeling approach’
‘The modeling approach to follow, which finally leads to the result reported in Figure’ (figure number not given)
‘we finally obatin the result in Figure 9’
‘The istantiation process’
‘The Artificial Intelligence’ – remove ‘the’
‘SEMANDO HEAD’ – Fig 13.
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