Automation in Construction 95 (2018) 35–45

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

A framework for integrating BIM and IoT through open standards T

⁎
Bhargav Dave , Andrea Buda, Antti Nurminen, Kary Främling
Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The built environment provides significant opportunities for IoT (Internet of Things) deployment, and can be
Internet of Things singled out as one of the most important aspects for IoT related research. While the IoT deployment in the built
BIM environment is growing exponentially, there exists a gap in integrating these two in a systematic way through
SmartCampus open standards and systems. From technological perspective, there is a need for convergence of diverse fields
Open standards
ranging from Building Information Systems and Building Services to Building Automation Systems, and IoT
devices and finally the end user services to develop smart, user oriented applications.
This paper outlines the efforts to develop a platform that integrates the built environment data with IoT
sensors in a campus wide, web based system called Otaniemi3D that provides information about energy usage,
occupancy and user comfort by integrating Building Information Models and IoT devices through open messa-
ging standards (O-MI and O-DF) and IFC models. The paper describes the design criteria, the system architecture,
the workflow and a proof of concept with potential use cases that integrate IoT with the built environment.
Initial results show that both the end users and other research groups can benefit from such platforms by either
consuming the data in their daily life or using the data for more advance research.

1. Introduction operations and maintenance [11,12]. With the emerging popularity of

the BIM platforms, there is an opportunity to leverage this technology
Recent advances in technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), so that it can be used to build open platforms that synchronise with
wireless sensors, data processing and analysis, and Building diverse information sources such as wireless sensors and building au-
Information Modelling (BIM) have the potential to transform how we tomation systems. However, there is a gap in research in integrating
interact with the built environment and improve the experience for end built environment data with IoT standards that shows tangible open
users and service providers [1–7]. The IoT devices and sensors are in- systems which are built upon open standards. The need for open stan-
creasingly being deployed in the built environment and industrial ap- dards become acute due to plethora of protocols and information ex-
plications. The number of connected devices have already overtaken change standards being used in both the built environment and IoT
connected human beings and are estimated to be around 9 billion. The domains [13]. Moreover, the IoT domain is siloed with many re-
sensor nodes are being deployed in various application areas such as the searchers highlighting the need for cross cutting applications built from
industrial, transportation, health and wellbeing, building automation, user centric perspective. There is also a growing consensus that future
automotive and retail. The number of sensor installation is increasing at “smart” applications should be more human centric and support bottom
an exponential rate and some estimates suggest that there will be up innovation rather than being technology centric and supporting top-
around 50 billion connected devices by 2020 [8]. down decision making. This research attempts to address this gap by
As majority of the IoT devices are deployed within the built en- providing the details of a proof of concept development that a) in-
vironment, the integration of built environment information and IoT tegrates built environment and IoT data; b) provides tangible, intuitive
becomes a prime challenge [5,6,9,10]. The built environment re- and open user interfaces and c) is situated in the real-world rather than
presents almost all aspects of human life, from healthcare to education being lab based. One of the motivations behind this study is to support
and industries, where the field of BIM is rapidly expanding as an in- distributed, cross cutting and bottom-up innovation by supporting both
formation delivery and management platform. BIM models are used consumption of data provided by the system and development of ap-
across the entire project lifecycle including design and construction to plications and further research by utilising the APIs (Application

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: bhargav.dave@aalto.fi (B. Dave), andrea.buda@aalto.fi (A. Buda), antti.nurminen@aalto.fi (A. Nurminen),
kary.framling@aalto.fi (K. Främling).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2018.07.022
Received 1 August 2017; Received in revised form 24 July 2018; Accepted 31 July 2018
Available online 14 August 2018
0926-5805/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
B. Dave et al. Automation in Construction 95 (2018) 35–45

Programming Interfaces) provided by the platform. closed ecosystems where information is still not shared openly amongst
The paper begins by providing a background on the key technolo- stakeholders [3,13]. BIM still remains a tool for the experts, and the
gies followed by the design rationale that explains the main factors that information that can be used to improve the quality of life of the in-
influenced the design of the proof of concept and the underlying fra- habitants hardly ever reaches them [6]. Within the subdomain of
mework. A description of the system architecture follows that outlines building management systems, which at the moment is the “low
the main components of the system. Subsequently, the proof of concept hanging fruit” from IoT deployment perspective since it already hosts
implementation, Otaniemi3D is described in detail followed by a real- majority of sensor deployments, there exist plethora of protocols and
life use case, discussion and conclusion. standards such as Zigbee, KNX, BACnet, LONWorks, DACI, Mobus,
oBIX, OPC, etc) [3]. Achieving integration and developing user inter-
2. Background faces that improve the quality of life of its inhabitants remains one of
the biggest challenges for IoT deployment in the built environment.
The field of built environment is plagued by information silos and
lack of standardization that affects the information flow [3]. The in- 2.1.2. Visualization of spatial information in real-time
dustry which touches upon almost every aspect of human activity, is The quest for 3D BIM real-time visualization arises from the com-
one of the most important at both the micro (things, spaces and munication needs between various actors in engineering, construction
buildings) and macro levels (campuses, cities, and regions) for IoT and architectural businesses. A 3D visualization offers a natural re-
deployment [7,14]. Where context is important for almost all IoT de- presentation that is useful in a range of applications along the design
ployments, spatial nature of the built environment provides a natural and construction processes. As a mediator of various data sources, an
and important platform that plays an important role there [5,6,10]. As a integration phase is required, typically collating CAD, BIM and GIS data
major platform emerging to host built environment data, BIM is an sources to a multipurpose platform [18]. However, as the related data
important technology to consider from IoT integration perspective. This sets are typically very complex, real-time visualization thereof has be-
section provides a state-of-the-art review in the area of BIM-IoT in- come a severe challenge, easily exceeding the capacity of the computer
tegration, Open standards within both BIM and IoT domains and the [19]. The hopes often lie in future hardware; unfortunately, even the
IoT deployment. latest hardware always seems to become overloaded [20]. Hence, de-
signers are forced to split the model to smaller parts. Despite this,
2.1. BIM and IoT commonly used software tools for BIM visualization would still either
fail to load the 3D data or be unable to render it in real-time, unless the
BIM now extends itself to cover many technological advances the model is further remodelled and simplified [21]. For a mobile case, the
industry is witnessing and is the natural interface for IoT deployment situation becomes considerably worse due to the lack of resources [22].
[11]. Several researchers have started to explore the potential synergy The software engineering approach of the building walkthrough case
between these two platforms. There has been research that demon- has also been suited for large scale mobile urban visualization. In this
strates the usefulness of IoT in breaking traditional silos in the built case, it was shown that an improvement of two orders of magnitude can
environment for the entire lifecycle, from design to construction to be reached without sacrificing model detail, achieving interactive ren-
handover [16]. dering rates for otherwise too complex a model [23]. This kind of ap-
Teizer et al. [17] have proposed to integrate BIM data with IoT proach has not yet been applied to the BIM case.
sensors, with a focus on making available performance, environmental
and localisation data of workers in an indoor work environment. The 2.2. IoT standards
goal of the research is to create a safe job site where information in-
tegrated from several sources such as production control and BIM can As a rapidly growing area, IoT has become a technological focus for
be synchronised with IoT sensors (lighting, proximity, etc.) to provide academia, industry, and even government organizations [8,24]. The IoT
real-time feedback to workers. The researchers use off-the-shelf BIM envisions a world of heterogeneous objects uniquely identifiable and
technologies along with readily available Bluetooth beacons and RFID accessible through the Internet [25–27], the whole forming a dynamic
sensors to integrate BIM and IoT information sources. Rowland [6] global network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities. None-
proposes gamification as an entry point in integrating BIM and IoT, theless, IoT is entering a new phase with an increased focus on how to
where the author proposes to bridge the vertical silos of BIM with the avoid the continual emergence of vertical silos, which hamper devel-
horizontal silos (or information flows) of IoT along with several use opers to produce disruptive and added value services across multiple
cases including wayfinding, spatial and context awareness and above all platforms and sectors (data is “siloed” in a unique system, cloud, do-
persistence of data for the project lifecycle. Alongside gamification, the main, and stays there). This vision of interoperability requires the
author also puts forward the use of Augmented Reality to interact and mastery of protocols and standards to leverage system interoperability
visualize BIM and IoT information. due to the large number of products, platforms, and competing appli-
On a macro scale, Isikdag [10] conceptualises the integration of BIM cations that coexist in the IoT [16,28,29]. In lack of standardized so-
and IoT in order to develop a GIS based city monitoring or management lutions, it is likely that a proliferation of architectures and identification
application framework. The author proposes to integrate information schemes will develop side by side, each one dedicated to a particular or
from physical IoT sensors with “virtual sensors” that represent BIM separate use, which will lead to the fragmentation of the IoT [27,30]. At
objects and their state (which can provide contextual and spatial in- the time of writing, there are more than 250 reported IoT platforms
formation) through RESTful APIs. available on the market [31].
From the literature review it emerges that the BIM and IoT in-
tegration research is in nascent stages where most proposals are at a 2.3. IoT deployment
conceptual stage. Except for Teizer et al. [17], none of the other re-
search has developed/demonstrated any real-world applications or Most IoT deployments remain expert driven and cater to specialised
proof of concepts. It should also be noted that the aspect of open data use cases. Also, majority of sensors due to their inherent nature are
and open communication standards has not been addressed sufficiently hidden away from human interaction, which in turn make them an area
within the domain of BIM and IoT integration. reserved for top-down innovation. The IoT domain in general and its
deployment areas such as Smart Cities have come under criticism for
2.1.1. Open standards, BIM and automation being top driven and self-congratulatory [32]. There is a growing
The fields of BIM and IoT are mired by proprietary file formats and concern that the entire area is driven by corporates, where greater

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B. Dave et al. Automation in Construction 95 (2018) 35–45

societal needs and benefits are neglected. While the hype has certainly programmatic data access using the standardized Web-API; iii) connect
been created, there has been too few examples of real-wold, bottom-up IoT data with the context and spaces in which it has been generated,
innovation [33,34]. and iv) develop interfaces including Virtual Reality to provide context
Researchers have realised the potential of campuses as rich test bed aware information to various stakeholders.
for IoT deployment. This is as campuses, University, School or
Organisational, are a highly dynamic environment and provide ex- 3.2. System architecture
cellent opportunities for active participation of researchers and students
to develop innovative solutions and use cases for a developing tech- Fig. 2 depicts the conceptual system architecture of Otaniemi3D, an
nological area such as IoT [35–37]. However, such opportunities are open, campus wide platform that integrates Building Information using
also somewhat restricted due to point wise implementation of pro- IFC with wireless sensor nodes through Open APIs. In synthesis, the
prietary technologies that do not provide open interfaces [38]. Also, developed system can be broken down in 3 main components:
researchers have criticised that previous smart campus deployments IoT Devices: Their primary function is to sense and act upon the
have mainly been conducted in a lab based environment that provide environment in which they have been installed.
limited potential to engage with real life users [4]. Backend Server: A collection of loosely coupled services commu-
nicating with each other following the SOA (Service Oriented
3. Otaniemi3D –core framework Architecture) design style. The grey boxes in Fig. 2 (IoT Service and
BIM Service) are already implemented, while the green boxes represent
At the outset, a three way challenge is addressed by this research, i) the planned services to be integrated in the future. The data and
the integration of built environment data and IoT sensors; ii) ensuring functionalities of each component are exposed to multiple Frontends,
that open standards are used in deployment and integration of both IoT Apps, WebApps via the standardized interface O-MI and O-DF (Open
and BIM standards; iii) developing application areas to demonstrate the Messaging Interface and Open Data Format). This layer deals with the
potential of this integration through real-world applications. This sec- interpretation of the built environment data through standard formats
tion provides a framework to tackle this challenge and describes: (1) the such as IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) either through directly stored
design rationale, (2) system architecture and (3) the technical details of local data or through data stored in servers and accessed through APIs.
the core components, i.e. IoT devices, Standardized Web-API and BIM Front end(s): The primary function of the frontends is to manage
Service Frontend. the interaction with the target users of the system (students and re-
searchers). In practice the front end can be implemented as websites,
WebApps or smartphone apps. They consume data from the backend,
3.1. Design rationale transforming into a human friendly form. In addition some of these
frontends are used to collect user inputs and data and feeding back to
The main aim of this research is to connect spaces/buildings with the backend system. So far only one front end has been developed,
the data they generate through IoT devices with people living/working which will be described in the following section. However, one of the
in those spaces as shown in Fig. 1. Humans have significant cognitive main goals of the entire smart campus project is to spark the develop-
abilities to understand and interpret visual and spatial (either 2D or 3D) ment of a multitude of apps, leveraging on the competencies and in-
information as compared with textual representations of spatial in- terests of various research groups. In the vision, providing program-
formation. This knowledge can be useful when analysing data: for ex- matic open-access to data is paramount for realizing the true potential
ample a temperature sensor positioned close to a window might be the of this type of systems.
reason why the recorded value is an outlier in the considered data set.
In addition, there are important usability considerations behind this 3.3. Standardized Web-API
research. Plain data, in a database or flat files is hard to understand
(what it is about, which sensor, from where it comes from etc.), as it One of the objectives of the Smart Campus backend is to harmonize
often lacks the necessary documentation and context to be properly publishing and consumption of data though a standardized Web-API.
used. Leveraging again on the strong human understanding of 3D The selected standards for achieving this goal are the Open Messaging
spaces, and the contextual information extracted from the built en- Interface (O-MI) (Open Group IoT Standard) and the Open Data Format
vironment, IoT interfaces should be able to provide a rich and intuitive (O-DF) (Open Group IoT Standard) published by the Open Group
interfaces to end users. (TOG), IoT work group in 2014. The TOG-IoT work group has an am-
There is a set of more concrete objectives, which represent the bitious vision: “Whereas the Web uses the HTTP protocol for trans-
foundation of this research, i) develop an end-to-end open source, se- mitting HTML formatted information which are rendered in the
cure IoT stack, from devices' firmware to web services; ii) provide browser for human consumption, the IoT will use O-MI for transmitting
O-DF payloads which will be mainly consumed by information sys-
tems.”
A detailed explanation of these standards is outside the scope of this
paper, nevertheless Fig. 3 depicts the core operation supported by O-MI
and its transported payload. The key characteristics of these standards
are:

1. Transport agnostic: O-MI runs on top of existing transport level

protocol. In general HTTP and WebSockets are the preferred pro-
tocols.
2. Publication and discovery of data sources and semantic metadata:
The data and methods available provided by a given node can be
discovered using the ReadAll operation. In addition O-DF tags can
be semantically enriched using RDFa and LinkedData vocabularies.
3. Payload agnostic: Even though the preferred payload is O-DF (XML
formatted), within specific O-DF tags any payload could be trans-
Fig. 1. SmartCampus project aim. ported (CSV, HTML, proprietary file formats), or even binary file

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Fig. 2. Conceptual system architecture.

formats converted using Base64 binary-to-text encoding. applications.

4. Support for Subscription: The possibility to create ad hoc, time
limited information flows by specifying for how long (TTL) and at
which sampling rate (INTERVAL) the data should be received, is the 3.4. IoT devices and service
cornerstone of O-MI and what makes it particularly suited for IoT
The IoT Service has been implemented using the open source

Fig. 3. Top: O-MI and O-DF payload. Bottom: O-MI main operation.

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Fig. 4. IoT service main components (WS stands for WebSocket).

reference implementation of the O-MI and O-DF standards, developed adopted, required some custom programming for retaining the asso-
at Aalto University (available online at https://github.com/AaltoAsia/ ciation between the IfcSensorType and the final output web formats.
O-MI). This particular implementation is an agent based system: Agents The process described is very similar to the one adopted by BIMServer
are simple programs, which in this instance are in charge of en- (http://bimserver.org/). The integration with the BIMServer is part of
capsulating the complexity of the lower level communication with IoT ongoing work and will be available in future integration of the Smart-
devices and the interaction with other services of the SmartCampus Campus backend.
backend. It is important to highlight that the outputs produced by
The data collected from the devices can be stored in a variety of IfcOpenShell and InstantReality/AOPT is acceptable if the main pur-
databases. Currently, the O-MI and O-DF reference implementation pose is simply to visualize the model. During model translation some
supports all the major RDBMS (Relational Database Management features (e.g. IfcSensorType and IfcSpaces) are lost or wrongly ag-
Systems, such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Postgresql, SQLite etc.) gregated. Retaining the association of these features between the ori-
providing a JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) driver. In addition, ginal IFC file and the final web formats is crucial to enable interactivity
noSQL solutions improving scalability and overall read/write perfor- with the 2D/3D models in the browser. A dedicated script (written in
mance, such as Warp10 (an open source GeoTime Series database), is Python) has been developed to fix the output of this translation tools.
also supported (Fig. 4). Unfortunately, this utility is not yet error free and in some cases the
final web formats needed some manual rework. Improving the de-
3.5. BIM service and front end scribed toolchain for achieving fully automated translation is an on-
going work.
This service is essentially used to manage the relationship between
spaces/buildings (described using IFC) and IoT data, in particular the 4. Otaniemi3D proof of concept
translation of static IFC files into interactive web documents. Fig. 5
describes the overall workflow and some important considerations re- The proof of concept has been called Otaniemi3D, where Otaniemi
garding how the BIM model must be built. The translation toolchain is the name of the Aalto University Campus and 3D stands for the

Fig. 5. IFC to WebGL and SVG translation toolchain.

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B. Dave et al. Automation in Construction 95 (2018) 35–45

Map
View 3D
View

Analytics
View
2D
View

Fig. 6. Otaniemi3D frontends.

dimension in which the BIM and IoT data is presented. Fig. 6 depicts the possible to drag and drop the items in the tree (e.g. CO2, Humidity,
main pages of the frontend of the system, the core components are: Temperature, etc. sensors organized according to room in which they
(1D) Data Analytics Page. have been installed) into the dotted line box. The sensor time series will
(2D) Floor Plan and heatmaps page. be automatically plotted with an associated colour and scale. In this
(3D) 3D Model and precise sensor location. way it is easier to compare it with trends from other sensors, spotting
The next section will explain the functionalities and interactivity possible correlations. In addition, it is also possible to select the time
implemented in these views. frame of the plot (Current (Last 20 readings), Last Week, Last Month,
Last Year and a custom time range).

4.1.2. 2D view. Floorplan heatmaps

4.1.1. 1D view. Live and historical sensor data This view leverages the same functionalities implemented for the
This view simply presents the sensor data in a traditional graph 1D-View, but instead of plotting single data points, it calculates an
form. Fig. 7 depicts the functionalities implemented. The tree on the left average for the selected time period generating a heatmap which is
side of the image is a user-friendly rendering of the XML retrieved from overlaid on the building floorplan.
the O-MI Service running in the backend. To plot sensor readings, it is This view tries to tap into the innate human cognitive abilities to

Fig. 7. 1D view live and historical sensor data.

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Fig. 8. (2D view) floorplan heatmaps.

understand/interpret spaces and visual information. For example, if a an interactive 360° picture of the room. In this picture, it is possible to
certain area of the floorplan has a colder colour, the user might deduce spot and click on the installed sensor box to retrieve the current read-
the possible location of a heating system problem (Fig. 8). ings. The same interactivity is also possible from the 3D model.

4.1.3. 3D view. Locating sensors 3D model and 360 panoramic images 5. Supported use cases
The 3D View is still in an experimental phase. Besides the tradi-
tional 3D interaction pattern (Zoom, Pan, Tilt), it is also possible to With an open framework, the authors envisage that a variety of use
enter a room number in the search bar activating a custom viewpoint/ cases can be developed to demonstrate the capability of the system.
camera centred in the middle of the selected room (see Fig. 9). Once in Being a campus based system, there is an ongoing effort to encourage
the middle of the room, it is possible to click a “360° Box” which opens other research teams and students to develop compatible applications

Fig. 9. 3D view - locating sensors 3D model and 360 panoramic images.

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by using the open APIs provided by the Otaniemi3D platform. The

following describes a use case where a campus wide room booking and
management system has been customised to work with the Otaniemi3D
APIs.

5.1. Aalto spaces mobile application

The integration between the Aalto Space app and HVAC controls
through O-MI and O-DF standards was part of the RealGO research &
development project at Aalto University. The project is carried out in
co-operation between Aalto Real Estate Business Unit, Aalto HVAC
Team, Aalto Computer Science, Aalto CRE (Campus and Real Estate)
and Aalto IT. The project is funded by STEK ry, STUL ry, Foundation for
Quality of Construction Products and Aalto University. As a part of the
RealGO project, integration of building control systems with IoT sensors
and room booking system was carried out. Aalto Space is a mobile app
for Android and iOS devices (available in respective App stores), which
can be used to find and book study and group work facilities and
meeting rooms within the campus. Using the map included in the app,
students can also navigate to facilities not included in the booking
system. It also includes an emergency messaging feature that allows the
communications department of Aalto University to send notifications in
case of emergency on campus. While the Aalto Space app was devel-
oped separately to the Otaniemi3D project, the developers of the
ReadyGO project saw an opportunity to integrate the app with air
conditioning and ventilation control along with the Aalto's campus
booking facility using the open standards developed through
Otaniemi3D research.

5.1.1. Functional description

Fig. 10 shows a floor selection view (after selecting the building,
there are currently 6 buildings available in the app) in the Aalto Spaces
app where the user can select the floor to book a room. Fig. 11 shows
rooms on the selected floor and their availability alongside the room
number, capacity, a picture of the room showing the facilities and
ratings by users. Once a room is selected the app provides the options to
book the space for either 30, 60 or 90 min as shown in Fig. 12.
The newly developed features have the possibility to control air
conditioning and ventilation from the room reservation in the Aalto
Space app. It controls the building automation system of Fidelix (a
commercial building automation provider based in Finland) and ra-
diator thermostats of Fourdeg. O-MI and O-DF are used to standardize Fig. 10. Aalto Space floor selection.
large parts of the interfaces. To achieve that, the control signal goes
through several parts: Aalto Space app, app middleware, O-MI Node, O-
When the O-MI Node receives the write request it passes it to O-MI
MI device agent (part of the Otaniemi3D framework), and building
device agent.
automation control servers.
The device agent is a wrapper which converts O-DF/O-MI messages
Through the newly developed features, users can control the tem-
to proprietary vendor specific interfaces. It also schedules the reset for
perature by either choosing the colder or warmer functions or setting it
default air conditioning settings and publishes the existence of the de-
on Auto. Similarly, the ventilation can be boosted if the users feel dis-
vices to the O-MI Node. In this case, it publishes virtual devices for the
comfort as shown in Fig. 13. In future, the app will show the current
control signals, because the same signals are used to control two phy-
temperature of the given room alongside CO2 levels. Following the
sical devices of different vendors. Two proprietary protocols were im-
booking, the users can rate the indoor conditions/comfort level of the
plemented, building automation was using SOAP and the thermostats
room. These ratings are then visible to future users as shown in Fig. 14.
had HTTP REST interface.
The building automation server was located on-site, but behind an
5.1.2. Technical implementation
industrial level VPN. The VPN was only meant to be used for remote
Aalto Space app was modified to include controls to boost ventila-
maintenance, so it was decided that the building automation server is
tion and change set point temperature after a reservation is made. If the
connected to the Smartcampus server via a secured Virtual LAN
user selects any non-default settings, an O-MI write request is sent. It
(VLAN). It was possible only because both servers were located on site
contains information specifying the target room, the selected settings
and there were already network infrastructure for building-automation-
and duration. The request is sent to the app middleware server.
dedicated VLAN.
The app middleware server was used instead of direct messaging to
the O-MI Node as it provides a simple security model for the app
communication and allows easier modifications to connections to ex- 5.1.3. Benefits of Aalto Space integration
ternal services. In this case the middleware server acts as a proxy and Issues such as space utilisation, user comfort, energy usage mon-
forwards the request to the O-MI Node. The node is running on-site as itoring and energy saving and a reduced carbon footprint are quite
part of Smartcampus server and handles also many other IoT devices. critical for all major campuses across the world. This is even more

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Fig. 11. Aalto Space room selection. Fig. 12. Aalto Space room reservation.

emphasised in the EU due to various regulatory and research pro- 5.2. Future integration
grammes. One of the main benefits of the Aalto Space app is to enhance
facility management by integrating IoT sensors to provide real-time With sensors installed, integrated with spatial information and
control and information availability for better decision making. Aalto's providing live data in a real-life setting through an open framework,
Campus and Real Estate department is one of the active members of researchers and students can use this to conduct analysis to support
ReadyGO project, and is planning to systematically integrate IoT sen- research projects, for example identifying user comfort patterns or en-
sors with the building information in order to better manage the fa- ergy usage patterns with changing sensor data, outside temperature and
cilities and improve the experience for campus inhabitants. For ex- variety of other factors. Alongside Aalto Space app, there are other si-
ample, based on collective feedback received through the Aalto Spaces milar initiatives in progress, where the data available through the
app, the Aalto Campus Real Estate department will be able to improve Otaniemi3D platform is being utilised in projects funded by Tekes
the facilities and prioritise maintenance events. By integrating real-time (Finnish Innovation funding body) in collaboration with Aalto's
controls with the Aalto Space app and integrating these with sensors, Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Computer Science de-
there is a potential to improve user comfort and space utilisation. Also, partment. The results from this will be disseminated in future pub-
by integrating the Aalto Space app with the campus' facility booking lications.
system, the HVAC systems can respond directly to the user demand and
switch off when not in use. This will lead to direct cost savings over a
6. Conclusions
period of time.
It should be noted that without the use of open standards such as O-
A large proportion of IoT devices are deployed in the built en-
MI/O-DF, it would be quite challenging to integrate all the information
vironment providing an opportunity to develop interfaces that allow
sources such as, Aalto's campus booking system, heating and ventilation
user interaction through open, intuitive interfaces. There is a growing
controls and sensors by Fidelix and Fourdeg, and building data through
concern that closed, proprietary standards and systems deployed in
Aalto Space and Otaniemi3D as highlighted in the case here.
siloed environment will hamper wider, bottom-up proliferation of IoT

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Fig. 13. Aalto Space room booking and control. Fig. 14. User feedback following the booking.

deployment. This research shows that it is possible to engage wide applications. In future, researchers can develop more detailed im-
range of stakeholders with IoT devices by integrating them with plementations that address these challenges and address real-life re-
building information data. The communication takes place through quirements.
Open Messaging interfaces eliminating the need to depend on closed
proprietary systems that hinder scalable deployment of such systems Acknowledgements
and through intuitive interfaces.
The proposed system provides a range of interfaces to help end users The authors would like to acknowledge the Aalto ASIA (Adaptive
navigate and explore the information available to them. As demon- System of Intelligent Agents) team at Computer Science department at
strated by the case study, the proposed framework encourages other Aalto University, especially Tuomas Kinnunen and Associate Professor
researchers and stakeholders within the campus to innovate using the Sylvain Kubler (University of Luxembourg). This project has received
open standards available to them through APIs. There are several funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and in-
challenges that present themselves while developing such a platform novation programme under grant agreement No 688203.
and especially in implementation. Without standardized export guide-
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