Ontology-Based Approach Supporting Multi-Objective Holistic Decision Making for Energy Pile System

Kun Meng,Chunyi Cui,Hailong Liu,Haijiang Li

doi:10.3390/buildings12020236

Abstract

The traditional way of designing energy pile system is mostly single domain/objective oriented, which lacks of means to coherently consider different while relevant factors across domains. The cost for life cycle design, construction and maintenance, return of investment, CO2 emission related sustainable requirements, and so on also need to be considered, in a systematic manner, along with the main functional design objective for loading capacity and robustness. This paper presents a novel multi-objective holistic approach for energy pile system design using ontology based multi-domain knowledge orchestration, which can holistically provide the designers with across domain factors regarding financial, safety, and environmental impact, for smart and holistic consideration during the early design stage. A prototypical ontology-based decision tool has been developed, aiming at the holistic optimization for energy pile system by combining ontology and Semantic Web Rule Language rules. A case study was performed to illustrate the details on how to apply knowledge query to provide a series of design alternatives autonomously by taking different design parameters into account. The method has demonstrated its practicability and scientific feasibility, it also shows the potential to be adopted and extended for other domains when dealing with multi-objective holistic design making.

Highlights

It is generally acknowledged that a large amount of greenhouse gases, produced by the building industry, has become a significant cause of global warming [1]
In Europe, 75% of the residential energy consumption is used for heating and cooling of buildings [2]
The global energy demand for the cooling of buildings has increased by 70% due to global warming [3]

Summary

Introduction

It is generally acknowledged that a large amount of greenhouse gases, produced by the building industry, has become a significant cause of global warming [1]. Such a system transmits heat or cold from ground to buildings during winter or summer, respectively. Due to high heat storage capacity and thermal conductivity of a concrete pile, the geothermal EPS using renewable ground source has great energy efficiency without greenhouse emissions

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion