Resources

Table of Contents


Brick Distribution


The Brick ontology is distributed as a set of Turtle files. Turtle is a compact textual format that is understood by most Semantic Web tools.

  • Latest Stable Version (1.3.0):

  • Latest Build:

    • Brick.ttl: The most recent build of Brick as of 2am UTC every day. Contains the latest changes, but also the latest bugs. Helpful for development; for stability, use the stable version linked above.
  • Old Versions:

Brick Tools


You can find all the tools that can help you with creating, maintaining, analyzing or visualizing a Brick model here.

Reference Brick Models


These five models are representative examples of how Brick can be used to model real buildings. For an in-depth discussion of the creation and evaluation of these Brick models, please refer to the BuildSys 2016 and Applied Energy 2018 papers.

Building Location BMS Built Sq Ft Points Relationships Classified
Soda Hall Berkeley, CA Barrington Systems 1994 110,565 1,586 1,939 98.7%
Gates Hillman Center Pittsburgh, PA, USA Automated Logic Controls 2009 217,000 8,292 35,693 99%
Rice Hall Charlottesville, VA, USA 2011 100,000 1,300 2,158 98.5%
Engineering Building Unit 3B San Diego, CA, USA Johnson Controls 2004 150,000 4,594 8,383 96%
Green Tech House Vejle, Denmark Niagara 2014 38,000 956 19,086 98.8%
  • Points: the number of BMS points contained in the model
  • Relationships: the number of relationships contained in the model
  • Classified: the percentage of points classified with Brick

Academic Publications


2020

Shepherding Metadata Through the Building Lifecycle Gabe Fierro, Anand Krishnan Prakash, Cory Mosiman, Marco Pritoni, Paul Raftery, Michael Wetter, David E Culler. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (BuildSys 2020). November 18, 2020, Virtual Event. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3408308.3427627

Demo Abstract: Interactive Metadata Integration with Brick Gabe Fierro, Anand Krishnan Prakash, Cory Mosiman, Marco Pritoni, Paul Raftery, Michael Wetter, David E Culler. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (BuildSys 2020). November 18, 2020, Virtual Event. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3408308.3431125

Formalizing Tag-Based Metadata with the Brick Ontology. Gabe Fierro, Jason Koh, Shreyas Nagare, Xiaolin Zang, Yuvraj Agarwal, Rajesh K. Gupta, and David E. Culler. Frontiers in Built Environment, Vol 6 (September 2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3360322.3360862

2019

Who can Access What, and When?: Understanding Minimal Access Requirements of Building Applications. Jason Koh, Dezhi Hong, Shreyas Nagare, Sudershan Boovaraghavan, Yuvraj Agarwal, and Rajesh K. Gupta. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities and Transportation (BuildSys 2019). November 10, 2019, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3360322.3360862

Beyond a House of Sticks: Formalizing Metadata Tags with Brick. Gabe Fierro, Jason Koh, Yuvraj Agarwal, Rajesh K. Gupta, and David E. Culler. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities and Transportation (BuildSys 2019). November 10, 2019, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3360322.3360862

Dataset: An Open Dataset and Collection Tool for BMS Point Labels. Gabe Fierro, Sriharsha Guduguntla, and David E. Culler. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Data Acquisition To Analysis (DATA 2019). November 13-14, 2019, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3360322.3360862

2018

Brick: Metadata Schema for Portable Smart Building Applications. Bharathan Balaji, Arka Bhattacharya, Gabriel Fierro, Jingkun Gao, Joshua Gluck, Dezhi Hong, Aslak Johansen, Jason Koh, Joern Ploennigs, Yuvraj Agarwal, Mario Berges, David Culler, Rajesh Gupta, Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard, Mani Srivastava, and Kamin Whitehouse. Applied Energy 226 (2018) 1273-1292. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.02.091

A Large-scale Evaluation of Automated Metadata Inference Approaches on Sensors from Air Handling Units. Jingkun Gao, Mario Bergés. Advanced Engineering Informatics (2018) Volume 37, Pages 14-30 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2018.04.010

Design and Analysis of a Query Processor for Brick. Gabe Fierro and David E. Culler. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks 14, 3-4, Article 18 (November 2018), 25 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3199666

Mortar: An Open Testbed for Portable Building Analytics. Gabe Fierro, Marco Pritoni, Moustafa AbdelBaky, Paul Raftery, Therese Peffer, Greg Thomson, and David E. Culler. In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Systems for Built Environments (BuildSys 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3276774.3276796

Scrabble: Transferrable Semi-Automated Semantic Metadata Normalization Using Intermediate Representation. Jason Koh, Bharathan Balaji, Dhiman Sengupta, Julian McAuley, Rajesh Gupta, and Yuvraj Agarwal. In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Systems for Built Environments (BuildSys 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3276774.3276795

Plaster: an Integration, Benchmark, and Development Framework for Metadata Normalization Methods. Jason Koh, Dezhi Hong, Rajesh Gupta, Kamin Whitehouse, Hongning Wang, and Yuvraj Agarwal. In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Systems for Built Environments (BuildSys 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3276774.3276794 Plaster: an Integration, Benchmark, and Development Framework for Metadata Normalization Methods. Jason Koh, Dezhi Hong, Rajesh Gupta, Kamin Whitehouse, Hongning Wang, and Yuvraj Agarwal. In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Systems for Built Environments (BuildSys 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3276774.3276794

2017

HodDB: a Query Processor for Brick. Gabe Fierro, David E. Culler. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environment (BuildSys 2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3137133.3141449

2016

Brick: Towards a Unified Metadata Schema For Buildings. Bharathan Balaji, Arka Bhattacharya, Gabriel Fierro, Jingkun Gao, Joshua Gluck, Dezhi Hong, Aslak Johansen, Jason Koh, Joern Ploennigs, Yuvraj Agarwal, Mario Berges, David Culler, Rajesh Gupta, Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard, Mani Srivastava, and Kamin Whitehouse. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys 2016). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2993422.2993577

Demo Abstract: Portable Queries Using the Brick Schema for Building Applications. Bharathan Balaji, Arka Bhattacharya, Gabriel Fierro, Jingkun Gao, Joshua Gluck, Dezhi Hong, Aslak Johansen, Jason Koh, Joern Ploennigs, Yuvraj Agarwal, Mario Berges, David Culler, Rajesh Gupta, Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard, Mani Srivastava, and Kamin Whitehouse. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys 2016). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2993422.2996411

2015

Short Paper: Analyzing Metadata Schemas for Buildings —The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Arka Bhattacharya, Joern Ploennigs, and David Culler. 2015. Short Paper: Analyzing Metadata Schemas for Buildings: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM International Conference on Embedded Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys 2015). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2821650.2821669

White Papers

White Paper | Brick Schema: Building Blocks for Smart Buildings Memoori 2019

Leaflet | Brick : Metadata Schema for Buildings for Building Applications

Presentations

2019

Why Brick is a Game Changer for Smart Buildings. Memoori Webinar 2019

Writing Portable Building Analytics with the Brick Metadata Schema. Presented at ACM E-Energy 2019

2016

Brick: Towards a Unified Metadata Schema For Buildings. Presented at BuildSys 2016