Sharing Building Information with Smart-M3

Semantic nets are a universal information structure that can be used for representing nearly any kind of information. This is why the semantic web has also chosen to use them as the universal format for representing data, usually using RDF (Resource Description Framework) as the syntax. Semantic nets are also suitable for sharing information between different domains, organizations, manufacturers etc. In this paper, we describe how a semantic net and agent-based shared storage called Smart-M3 has been implemented and can be used for such information sharing. The particular application domain studied is building automation, where interoperability between equipment made by different manufacturers is rare. This is a great challenge for implementing "ubiquitously smart buildings", where building automation systems, user interfaces and services could interact. The paper describes how the Smart-M3 concept can be used as an enabler of interoperability, where an ecosystem of supplementary services is created through manufacturer-