Ontologies play a critical role in data exchange, information integration, and knowledge sharing across diverse smart building applications. Yet, semantic differences between the prevailing building ontologies hamper their purpose of bringing data interoperability and restrict the ability to reuse building ontologies in real-world applications. In this paper, we propose and adopt a framework to conduct a systematic comparison and evaluation of four popular building ontologies (Brick Schema, RealEstateCore, Project Haystack and Google's Digital Buildings) from both axiomatic design and assertions in a use case, namely the Terminological Box (TBox) evaluation and the Assertion Box (ABox) evaluation. In the TBox evaluation, we use the SQuaRE-based Ontology Quality Evaluation (OQuaRE) Framework and concede that Project Haystack and Brick Schema are more compact with respect to the ontology axiomatic design. In the ABox evaluation, we apply an empirical study with sample building data that suggests that Brick Schema and RealEstateCore have greater completeness and expressiveness in capturing the main concepts and relations within the building domain. The results implicitly indicate that there is no universal building ontology for integrating Linked Building Data (LBD). We also discuss ontology compatibility and investigate building ontology design patterns (ODPs) to support ontology matching, alignment, and harmonisation.

翻译：本体在跨智能建筑应用的数据交换、信息集成与知识共享中发挥关键作用。然而，主流建筑本体之间的语义差异阻碍了其实现数据互操作性的目标，并限制了本体在实际应用中的重用能力。本文提出并采用一套框架，从公理化设计与用例断言两个维度，对四种主流建筑本体（Brick Schema、RealEstateCore、Project Haystack 及 Google's Digital Buildings）进行系统比较与评估，即术语箱（TBox）评估与断言箱（ABox）评估。在TBox评估中，我们采用基于SQuaRE的本体质量评估（OQuaRE）框架，发现Project Haystack与Brick Schema在本体公理化设计方面更为紧凑。在ABox评估中，我们利用样本建筑数据进行实证研究，结果表明Brick Schema与RealEstateCore在捕捉建筑领域核心概念与关系方面具备更高的完备性与表达力。结果隐含地表明，尚无统一的本体可用于集成关联建筑数据（LBD）。我们还探讨了本体兼容性，并研究了建筑本体设计模式（ODPs）以支持本体匹配、对齐与协调。