V2/Concepts/Brick Schema

Brick Schema

General

Support for Brick Schema is added to Senfi, to describe physical, logical and virtual things in a building and their relationships with one another.

Things that can be described by Brick schema include:

• Locations (e.g. building, level, room, zone, space)
• Equipment (e.g. chiller, pump, fan)
• Points (e.g. air temperature, water flow rate)

Relationships that can be described by Brick schema include:

• partOf (e.g. a room is part of a particular level)
• controls
• feeds
• serves
• locatedIn (e.g. a chiller is located in a particular room)

Currently, Senfi supports brick schema v1.2.0. Only Brick equipment and brick points are supported within Senfi.

Brick Schema

Brick schema uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) to describe locations, equipment and points in a building. It includes a dictionary of common location, equipment and point classes (types), as well as relationship types which are used as descriptors of assets.

Examples include:

• Location classes: brick:Building, brick:Level, brick:HVAC_Zone, brick:Electrical_Room
• Equipment classes: brick:AHU, brick:Damper, brick:Variable_Air_Volume_Box, brick:Thermostat
• Point classes: brick:Start_Stop_Command, brick:Motor_Speed_Sensor, brick:Effective_Air_Temperature_Setpoint
• Relationships: brick:hasPart, brick:controls, brick:feeds

Brick Entities

• Locations, equipment and points described by brick are called entities.
• Entities can have/inherit one of more brick classes
• Relationships are the link between entities
• Entities have a name

Brick Equipment

• Brick equipment entities are used to describe the physical equipment in a building.
• Each equipment have one or more brick equipment classes, to describe their type.
• Brick equipment can have relationships to other brick equipment
  • e.g. feeds, controls
• Brick equipment can have relationships to other brick points

Brick Points

• Brick point entities are used to describe telemetery sources or data
• Each points have one or more brick point classes, to describe their type.
• Brick point entities typically have a relationship to a brick equipment
  • e.g. a room temperature setpoint is point of a thermostat equipment
  • e.g. an aircon equipment has points on/off status point, room temperature point, temperature setpoint, fan speed point

You can read on the following section to learn how Brick information is used within Senfi's Class and Relationships:

• Senfi Classes and Relationships

What's Next

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• Learn about Senfi Classes and Relationships