OBIX Use Cases .01

OBIX Use Cases .01

OBIX Use Cases

Editor: Doug Ransom, Power Measurement

23 September 2004

Scope

This document is a collection of proposed,unrefined use cases, abuse cases, and anti-use cases in support of the OBIX Charter. These have not been evaluated or critiqued. The group is in “brainstorm mode” and we are trying to elicit as many use cases as possible.

Later we will pair them down, and outline how they might be satisfied using OBIX or complementary technologies like UDDI or WS-*.

The submitter of each use case has been recorded so that clarifications can be

Actors

Enterprise - Corporate wide enterprise that could include multiple buildings
in multiple locations.

Facility - A single building or campus location.
- Enterprise financial manager - Responsible for allocating costs to the
responsible parties within the enterprise. The responsible parties could be
buildings, departments, production lines, machines, or many other methods of
allocating energy costs.
- Facility engineer - Responsible for managing energy consumption and the
reduction thereof.
- Facility staff - Responsible for monitoring particular loads within a
facility. Will need access to raw energy usage data. Is not concerned with
dollar costs.
- Contractor - Financial services - Similar to Enterprise financial manager
but is external to the enterprise so there are additional security concerns.
- Contractor - Facility engineer - Similar to facility engineer but is
external to the enterprise so there are additional security concerns.
- Contractor - Facility staff - Similar to facility staff but is external to
the enterprise so there are additional security concerns.
- Energy meter - Individual meter producing energy metering data. Some of
these may produce XML out of the box, others may need a Energy Software
System to collect the data and convert to XML.
- Energy Software System - Collects data from many Energy meters and offers
the data up to the next level, the Energy Collection system. At this level,
there could be some aggregation of meter data performed.
- Energy Collection System - Collects data from the Energy Software Systems
and individual Energy meters. The data is then processed, aggregated, and
made available to the Energy Reporting system.
- Energy Reporting System - Presents the data from the Energy collection
system to the data users(actors at the top of the list) in a secure, usable
format for their job function.

Use Cases

Use Case Template

Please use this template when adding use cases:

Title
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events
Post-Conditions

New Building Commissioning

These were submitted by Rich Harwell:

Title / Electrical System “Shake Out”
Preconditions / The building has been constructed and the primary electrical loads installed
Actors / Contractor
Flow of Events /

1. Electrical equipment is installed per design.
2. Electrical equipment is configured based on electrical system design.
3. The loads are energized as they become available.
4. Issues of wiring / loads / equipment set-up are identified and resolved.
5. Power Quality can be checked for issues arising from the internal loads or utility service.

Post-Conditions / The Electrical system is checked out for proper installation and operation with the existing and planned expansion loads.
Title / Energy usage validation (LEEDS)
Preconditions / The building has been constructed and the primary electrical loads installed. Expected energy usage has been estimated by the AE during design.
Actors / AE , Contractor, Owner
Flow of Events /

1. Electrical equipment is installed per design.
2. Electrical equipment is configured based on electrical system design.
3. The loads are energized as they become available.
4. Energy usage is measured and compared to the calculated energy usage
5. Energy bill can be estimated, rate structures compared to guide energy purchase

Post-Conditions / The Energy usage estimates are validated or updated. Expected operational cost established

Building Operation and Maintenance

Title / Facility “Operations Monitoring”
Preconditions / The building has been properly commissioned and is operating. Change in load, quality of power, etc… is being proactively monitored.
Actors / Facility Manager, Service Provider
Flow of Events /

1. Electrical system is monitored on-line
2. Information on “Health” of electrical system is bubbled up to the facility manager
3. Appropriate reports are generated as desired
4. Operational systems associated with loads contacted as appropriate

Post-Conditions / Change in operations identified before they seriously degrade performance.
Title / Facility “Billing check”
Preconditions / The building has been properly commissioned and is operating. The utility is providing bills for electrical usage
Actors / Facility financial Manager, Service Provider
Flow of Events /

1. Energy usage is monitored on-line
2. Actual energy usage is compared to the bill from the utility
3. Notification and reports are generated as appropriate
4. Other systems such as accounting communicated with as appropriate

Post-Conditions / Inappropriate billing avoided. Quick notification if usage pattern is changed
Title / Facility “Sub-Billing generation”
Preconditions / The building has been properly commissioned and is operating. The utility is providing bills for electrical usage.
Actors / Facility financial Manager, tenants, utility Provider
Flow of Events /

1. Energy usage is monitored on-line by billing group
2. Bills are generated for tenants based on their measured usage.
3. Other systems such as accounting communicated with as appropriate

Post-Conditions / Appropriate billing of tenants achieved. Quick notification if usage pattern is changed
Title / Facility “Alarms”
Preconditions / The building has been properly commissioned and is operating. Significant change in load, quality of power, etc… is being proactively monitored.
Actors / Facility Manager, Service Provider
Flow of Events /

1. Electrical system is monitored on-line
2. Significant changes such as service interruption or electrical system malfunction are detected
3. Rapid notification of appropriate individual.
4. Information provided to help quickly resolve the issues
5. Operational systems associated with loads contacted as appropriate

Post-Conditions / Significant issues quickly identified and addressed.

2004 Spring Transition Team

Title / Coordinated Access Control & HVAC
Preconditions
Actors / A tenant entering a lobby door after hours uses a card reader or keypad to gain access. Simultaneously, the HVAC starts and lighting turns on in the tenant's space so the tenant is safe and comfortable when entering their space. The building manager receives the necessary information to bill the tenant for use of the environmental systems from the time they walk in the door until they later leave the building.
Flow of Events
Post-Conditions
Title / Access Control and HR coordination
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / A new employee is enrolled by human resources and a photo badge is printed. Simultaneously, that badge is activated as a credential in the access control system and parameters for when and where they can go are downloaded into controllers and readers.
Post-Conditions
Title / After-hours security console.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / An "after hours" security console provides graphical information of alarms for security and HVAC for emergency response at a multi-building office campus.
Post-Conditions
Title / Access control, landlord activities, administration, coordinated with enrollment.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Dorm residents leave for the summer. Their card credentials are disabled - but not deleted - until they re-enroll for the fall semester. Student Housing, Administration, and Security all save many keystrokes.
Post-Conditions
Title / Class/building automation coordination
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / The provosts office sets up class schedules and space assignments and the building automation systems automatically schedule the appropriate spaces for occupancy
Post-Conditions
Title / Energy users responsible for own energy use
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / A research building occupant can access real-time energy use data to take advantage of time-of-day energy rates when running major pieces of equipment
Post-Conditions
Title / Coordinated room booking and building automation systems.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / A secretary in a conference facility can have a desktop application the enables room scheduling and setpoint control for the entire conference facility without any interaction with Building Automation System staff
Post-Conditions
Title / Business model synthesis.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / A professor in the School of Business can assign undergraduate research that easily makes use of near real-time data from energy producing and consuming equipment to develop business models
Post-Conditions
Title / Load Profile Modeling for Decision Support
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Load profile modeling can provide decision support for configuration and operation of energy producing utilities such as cogeneration and chilled water distribution systems
Post-Conditions
Title / Energy/weather/cogeneration coincidental analysis studies.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Hourly electric rate structures analyzed in conjunction with weather models and load profiles enable optimization of combined cycle cogeneration plants and thermal storage systems
Post-Conditions

10.

Title / ?
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / HVAC analytical programs that rely on historical data for trend analysis and comparison with design models support maintenance and renewal and replacement programs and allows HVAC system optimization using rules-based analysis
Post-Conditions

11.

Title / Design Model integrates with BAS
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Construction documents generated using XML and SVG are able to become part of the real-time BAS operator interface after project completion
Post-Conditions

12.

Title / ?
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / GIS utility maps make use of real-time metering data to identify possible utility delivery problems before customers are impacted
Post-Conditions

13.

Title / ?
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Utility billing systems are able to make use of multiple rate structures to allow customers to choose which best suits their operation without additional staff requirements since historical metering data can be automatically integrated into the bill
Post-Conditions

14.

Title
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / IAQ information (both historical and real time) can be accessed directly by Environment Health and Safety to support healthy buildings and identify unhealthy ones-without the support of BAS staff
Post-Conditions

15.

Title
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / A maintenance management system that interacts with a building control system can perform predictive maintenance and support run time maintenance models for complex systems-generating work requests that are based on real time information. If this same system is able to interact with central stores and procurement, it can also ensure parts and tools required for scheduled maintenance are available
Post-Conditions

Facility Room

RC Teal via Toby Considine

Title / Diesel Consumption Rates
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Diesel consumption rate indicators to allow me to accurately predict critical timing (of what?)
Post-Conditions
Title / Chilled Water
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Chilled water bridge reporting and flow velocity rate to allow me to know exactly when a rise will hit my system, and control valves setup to prevent it.
Post-Conditions

-

Title / Survival of Loss Of Phase Monitoring.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / power demand reporting on each phase to ensure that dual power supply systems can continue to run if a phase problem occurs[DR1].
Post-Conditions

-

Title / Floor hot spot detection
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Differential floor pressure indicators could help prevent hot spots and help ensure constant temp in machine room
Post-Conditions

-

Title / Physical Access Control based on Safe Humidity Levels
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Humidity sensors tied into access systems could prevent entry if humidity levels went below safe operating levels
Post-Conditions

-

Peter Manolescue

Title / Research Lab Temperature Diagnosis
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / A facility manager has had complaints about the afternoon air
temperature in the research lab. He sets up a schedule to monitor and record the temperature to an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis.
Post-Conditions

..

Title / Occupancy Analysis to Evaluate Hot Desking
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / As part of cut backs, the company needs to reduce its office
space. There is a proposal to implement 'hot-desking' to share facilities between workers who spend a lot of time out of the company.
Rather than ask each employee to estimate how much time he/she spends in the company (and risk inaccurate replies) a study is performed over two months to record, from the access control system, actual presence of each individual in the facility. This is combined with time information from the motion sensors to estimate real space usage within departments.
Information is used to optimize the space and operations of the company.
Post-Conditions
Title / Identification of Executives in Facility
Preconditions / The president needs to call a quick but important meeting with
his senior staff. As part of corporate economies, personal secretaries were replaced by staff services six months previously. So he has no idea if the people he needs are in the facility which is very large.
There is no point to the meeting if anyone is absent. He could interrogate the access control system but it only has readers for entrance not exit so team members could have left without notification.
Recently, however, the car park system's CCTV was fitted with number plate recognition with a facility to read on entrance and exit. From this he discovers that all the managers are in (or at least their cars are). He sends a group SMS to call a meeting in 30 minutes.
Actors
Flow of Events
Post-Conditions

.

Title / Annunciation of Production Metrics
Preconditions
Actors / The works council has been looking at ways to improve motivation
among people working on the line. Investigations have shown that people crave feedback about how they are doing as a team. Someone comes up with an idea to experiment with. As each item comes off the production line, it is automatically counted. This information is sent to the PA system and every time one hundred products are completed, an automating message is broadcast over the PA with a measure of how much more or less has been produced at that time compared with the previous shift. Since the facility runs an aggressive and rewarding production bonus scheme, this is valuable information for the teams.
Flow of Events
Post-Conditions
Title / Realtime detection of intruders who have hacked the physical security system.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Equipment has been disappearing from the medical emergency room.
The facility manager is locking the door outside of normal working time but suspects that someone has a copy of the master key and is taking items after hours. She sets up a trigger to send an SMS message to her cell phone every time the door is opened outside normal hours.
Post-Conditions
Title / Lighting and PA Systems Optimal Routing
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Emergency lighting and PA system is being installed in a
hospital. The building has many emergency exits. Occupants need to be directed away from any fire and towards the nearest safe exit but this will vary according the fire location. A logic pattern is set up to define the lighting pattern and fast exit messages as a function of which fire sensors have been activated.
Post-Conditions
Title / Tactical activation of sports facilities.
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / On a university campus, late night basketball matches are
sometimes scheduled at short notice. The facility manager needs to 'wake up' the sports hall to get it ready. At present he needs to set all the different systems manually: HVAC, lighting, PA, security etc.
What he would prefer is simply to use his PC to select the basketball match 'scene' from a list of pre-defined configurations with a schedule that gives a start time of 9pm and automatic shut down at midnight. The HVAC system will measure the outside air temperature and calculate when the heating has to come on to achieve 20 degrees Centigrade by 9pm.
Post-Conditions
Title / Electrical Load coordination using work profiles to limit demand peaks
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / The local power utility cannot build any more generating
capacity. To prevent outages, it is motivating companies to restrict consumption. An engineering company is interested in a new contract which gives lower prices if they can guarantee that certain levels of power consumption will never be exceeded. However the energy consumption profile of the site varies considerably; one week welding is crucial, the next chemical treatment is essential. The company needs different energy profiles to shed different non-essential loads at different times and under different conditions. By defining different work profiles the facility manager can ensure power is only cut from non-essential activities whilst core production can continue.
Post-Conditions

Life Cycles Automation

Title
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / The operating data provided once for performance analysis during commissioning continues to be available every day. As these processes become more automated, they become the basis for continuous commissioning, wherein the performance of building subsystems can be verified every day.
1.Systems can be repaired when they begin to drift out of control, not when they fail. Such repairs would be when convenient and during scheduled outages. This will improve tenant satisfaction while forfending expensive emergency repairs and overtime.
2.R&R Models can be developed based upon peak performance rather than upon impending failure.
3.It will be possible to build defensible definitions of LEEDs compliance for existing buildings.
Post-Conditions

Dougs Use Cases

Title / Current Fan Status
Preconditions
Actors
Flow of Events / Get the status of all the fans in the hvac system
Post-Conditions

Get the status of all the fans in the hvac system.