A new Open Building Information Exchange (oBIX) Technical Committee has been formed at OASIS to "define a standard web services protocol to enable communications between building mechanical and electrical systems and enterprise applications. This protocol will enable facilities and their operations to be managed as full participants in knowledge-based businesses. The oBIX specification will utilize web services for exchange of information with the mechanical and electrical systems in commercial buildings."

TC proposers include representatives from Cisco Systems, Clasma, Echelon, Johnson Controls, LonMark International, Trane, Tridium, and the University of North Carolina.

The OASIS oBIX TC will continue work previously hosted by the Continental Automated Building Association (CABA) in an XML/Web Services Guideline Committee.

Motivation for the technical work is provided in the TC Call for Participation: "most mechanical and electrical systems are provided with embedded digital controls (DDC) and most of these devices are low cost and not enabled for TCP/IP. They are installed with dedicated communications wiring. Larger DDC controllers provide network communications for these dedicated controllers. There are several well established binary protocols (BACnet, LonTalk, Modbus, DALI) that are used on these dedicated networks in addition to numerous proprietary protocols. While these binary protocols can be used over TCP/IP networks — they have challenges with routers, firewalls, security, and compatibility with other network applications. There is an added challenge in that the industry is split between several largely incompatible protocols."

The oBIX TC therefore proposes to "develop a publicly available web services interface specification that can be used to obtain data in a simple and secure manner from HVAC, access control, utilities, and other building automation systems, and to provide data exchange between facility systems and enterprise applications. In addition, the TC will develop implementation guidelines, as needed, to facilitate the development of products that use the web service interface."

The proposed TC Chair is Toby Considine (University of North Carolina). An initial meeting of the oBIX TC is scheduled to be held as a teleconference on June 15, 2004, sponsored by Trane.

From the oBIX TC FAQ Document

Why is oBIX important? — When we instrument control systems using an IT standard like Web Services, we enable the largest assets of the enterprise, its facilities, to be fully available to the business management of the enterprise.

What are Building Control Systems? — Building controls are all the smart systems embedded in buildings, systems that have traditionally been obscured by proprietary control standards and arcane details. Examples of Building Control Systems include: Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC), Elevators, Laboratory Equipment, Life/Safety systems, Access Control, Intruder Detection, A/V Event Management, CCTV Monitoring, and many others. oBIX also extends to non-control system sensing, providing real-time access to sensors include Environmental Sensing, Electrical Panels, Power Meters as well as other Utility Meters, anything that measures or monitors the physical space in a facility.

What's the relevance of buildings and HVAC to the Enterprise? — Buildings and facilities are now a significant area for organizations to include in such enterprise systems; corporations now appreciate that the effectiveness of their facilities can make a huge difference to their bottom line. There is currently no easy way for IT departments-whose responsibility it is to make all this happen-to integrate their systems with the systems that run, manage and monitor their buildings and facilities. What's important to note is that this has to be done on the IT department's terms using their language, rules, standards and tools, and XML and Web Services have been created specifically to solve this kind of problem. oBIX is an initiative to use these technologies for building systems, and the IT folk will be very happy about this.

Why do buildings and enterprise need to be connected? — Campus scheduling is a clear example. A system that can reserve a meeting room can automatically schedule the environmental, lighting and security systems to adjust themselves on the basis of knowing when the room will be in use, and all this information is tied into the corporate scheduling, telephone conference, A/V resources and so on. Another great example would be multi-unit businesses such as fast-food establishments, banks, etc. These building types have a need to provide energy usage at the month's end to the enterprise systems monitoring the profitability of each and all units, or maybe even correlate the level of business to weather conditions outside and inside each retail unit.

From the oBIX TC Announcement and Call for Participation

The purpose of the OASIS Open Building Information Exchange (oBIX) TC is to define a standard web services protocol to enable communications between building mechanical and electrical systems and enterprise applications. This protocol will enable facilities and their operations to be managed as full participants in knowledge-based businesses.

The oBIX specification will utilize web services for exchange of information with the mechanical and electrical systems in commercial buildings.

Presently most mechanical and electrical systems are provided with embedded digital controls (DDC). Most of these devices are low cost and not enabled for TCP/IP. They are installed with dedicated communications wiring. Larger DDC controllers provide network communications for these dedicated controllers. There are several well established binary protocols (BACnet, LonTalk, Modbus, DALI) that are used on these dedicated networks in addition to numerous proprietary protocols. While these binary protocols can be used over TCP/IP networks — they have challenges with routers, firewalls, security, and compatibility with other network applications. There is an added challenge in that the industry is split between several largely incompatible protocols.

Because oBIX integrates with the enterprise, it will enable mechanical and electrical control systems to provide continuous visibility of operational status and performance, flagging problems and trends for system analysis or human attention.

OBIX provides a technology that enables facilities operators, owners and tenants to make decisions based on a fully integrated consideration of all life-cycle, environmental, cost, and performance factors.

The scope of the oBIX TC is to develop a publicly available web services interface specification that can be used to obtain data in a simple and secure manner from HVAC, access control, utilities, and other building automation systems, and to provide data exchange between facility systems and enterprise applications. In addition, the TC will develop implementation guidelines, as needed, to facilitate the development of products that use the web service interface. Work outside of the above will be considered out of scope for the TC.

TC List of Deliverables

Release 1 (Completion date, end of 2004):

• Standard for the exchange of data between systems in a secure manner.
• Eventing of data (alarms and events)
• Logs of data for trending variables such as temperature

The intent of the committee is to complete several iterations of this standard, each of which will add in additional functionality. In addition the committee intends to address the issues of interoperability and conformance testing, and further revision and maintenance of the specification. Deliverables related to these ongoing efforts will be added to the TC charter in accordance with the OASIS TC Process.

Anticipated Audience

1. Owners and managers of commercial buildings
2. Manufacturers of Building Automation products
3. Consultants and designers of buildings and their sub-systems
4. The IT community that builds and manages networks

Work on this project has been under progress since 4/2003 under the trade group known as CABA. Significant progress and structure is already complete. See www.obix.org and www.caba.org for more information.

It is anticipated by the proposers that CABA will promote the technical work done by the OASIS oBIX TC. Appropriate liaisons will be created between the TC and CABA to coordinate efforts in this area.

Other significant work in the area of HVAC and Facility management protocols has been achieved by ASHRAE (BACnet Standard) and also by LonMark International. These are both Binary protocols and are designed for use over various types of networks. For more details please refer to www.bacnet.org and www.lonmark.org. Liaisons will be established with these groups as appropriate.

oBIX TC Proposers

• Dave Clute, Cisco Systems, dclute@cisco.com
• Paul Ehrlich, Trane, pehrlich@trane.com
• John Petze, Tridium, Jpetze@tridium.com
• Toby Considine, University of North Carolina, toby.considine@fac.unc.edu
• Byron Hill, Johnson Controls, Byron.K.Hill@jci.com
• Jeremy Roberts, LonMark International, jeremy@lonmark.org
• Anto Budiardjo, Clasma, antob@clasma.com
• Sam Yang, Echelon, syang@echelon.com
• Richard Blomseth, Echelon, rich@echelon.com
• Anno Scholten, Individual, anno@estructures.com