D2.3 MATRYCS Reference Architecture for Building Data v1.0
Creators: name: Marco Pau
name: Zhiyu Pan
name: Stefan Lankes
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021
Subjects: Open Reference Architecture
Technical Specifications and Requirements
Big Data Management
Data Governance
Data Processing
Building Services
Big Data Analytics
Semantic Interoperability
Big Data Value Chain
Data Spaces

description: The process of digitalization and smartification of the European building sector is leading to the generation of a huge amount of data provided by sensors, smart meters, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and a multitude of other data sources. Exploiting these data and capturing their value through ad hoc analytics services is essential to increase the energy efficiency in the building domain and to move towards the decarbonisation and emission reductions’ targets set by the European Commission. Unfortunately, available data are today mostly isolated and fragmented in non-interoperable data silos, which makes them hardly accessible to stakeholders interested in the design and provision of building services. Moreover, building data come from a broad range of heterogeneous data sources and are characterized by different data formats, size, resolution, levels of granularity, veracity, etc., which further hampers the efficient use of data. Overall, this makes it extremely difficult to extract value from these data and to create advanced services that could help to fasten the transition towards smart energy-aware buildings.


Similar to other sectors, the building domain would hence gain huge benefits from the definition of appropriate frameworks and architectures for the management and exchange of building-related (but not only) data. Having a shared and commonly accepted architecture for the deployment of data processing technologies, tools and services would in fact allow fully exploiting the value associated to building data, thus fostering the creation of new business cases, and facilitating the introduction of innovation in the building ecosystem. This would clearly represent a key benefit for both the business and public sector, but also for individual citizens and for the society. To achieve this, therefore, it is of utmost importance to define the architectural solutions that should be used to ensure data interoperability, the deployment of the needed technologies and data analytics tools, and the seamless integration of new services to continuously create business value. Such an architecture has obviously to consider the existing needs and challenges and should offer solutions to fulfil the specifications and requirements present in the building sector, taking into account the foreseeable use cases and the business interests of all the involved stakeholders.


Given this scenario, one of the main objectives of the MATRYCS project is to define and deploy a Reference Architecture for building data exchange, management, and real-time processing. This architecture must provide an open, interoperable, scalable data-driven framework for the management of building-related data and it aims at providing a unifying approach for the deployment, use and access of the desired data analytics tools and services from the Building Value Chain (BVC) stakeholders. This Deliverable will present the first version of the MATRYCS reference architecture, which includes the main concepts, design principles and its functional description. The defined architecture considers the multiple efforts already done in other domains for the definition of big data architectural models and considers the specifications and requirements derived from the MATRYCS use cases to create a solution tailored to the specific needs of the building sector.