I am trying to understand and clarify the use of zone tag and when to use system tag. I believe this needs clarification in the docs.
Here’s what I found:
Starting with Project Haystack’s definitions:
- system: “Grouping of related equipment dedicated to a single application”, link: project-haystack.org/doc/lib-phIoT/system
- zone: “Space associated with a specific system.”, link: project-haystack.org/doc/lib-phIoT/zone-space
The definition of the zone-space is associated only with system element. However, after discussing with architects and MEP engineers, I’ve noticed the following:
Lot of architects refer to zones as group of zones and/or rooms. Then a lot of MEP engineers seeems to use the terms zone and system interchangeably. Consequently, shall the community consider changing the definition to Space associated with a specific purpose, that could be either system or space ? I don’t think that zone shall be restricted to system. Maybe that would mean that we will have to define different zone types, where we define for example zone-area type (eg East Wing containing group of space entities) and zone-system type as it is already defined in the documentation ?
To standardise the definitions based on other ontologies, maybe we shall consider the definition from BOT ontology ?
Zones are areas with spatial 3D volumes, and include, Buildings, Storeys, and Spaces. Zones may contain other zones, Buildings may contain storeys, Storeys may contain spaces.
https://w3c-lbd-cg.github.io/bot/#:~:text=Zones%20are%20areas%20with%20spatial
Also, based on the current definition of zone and system, shouldn’t be added in the spec for system the fact that when we use spaceRef for systems they shall be zones or group of zones since the current definition is “space associated with a specific system” ? Furthermore, when it comes to zones shouldn’t be added in the spec for zones standardised tags referring to the indoor air quality and occupancy eg indoor air quality zone and occupancy zone like we have hvac-zone and lighting-zone?
I welcome the thoughts of the community on that matter. Maybe a WG needs to be created where zone and system are clarified and further developed hand in hand . Happy to lead on that as well
Best Regards, Georgios Grigoriou
Brian FrankThu 10 Aug 2023
Maybe we can tweak the language, but I think its pretty clear:
space: Space is a three-dimensional volume in the built environment (already pretty close to BOT definition you provided)
zone: is a specific type of space, which means that is a three-dimensional volume. You should be able to outline a zone on a floor plan
So zone is a geometry on a floor plan that is related to a system. But a system is the actual equipment related to the function. A zone is served by a system, but is not a system itself.
Furthermore, when it comes to zones shouldn’t be added in the spec for zones standardised tags referring to the indoor air quality
I get the difference between zone and system. I guess my desire for clarification comes from the different terminology that people use in the industry.
It just seems that for a lot of architects and design engineers zone also means a collection of space entities
Example: North Wing comprises a collection of room entities in the north of a building. I saw that a couple of times in drawings as well defining a zone based on spaces covering a purpose that is not necessarily system oriented.
I guess this can be modelled as a collections/group of spaces in order to be fully compatible with the Haystack Ontology? Just wanted to check if we could harmonize standardise methodology as that the idea of referring to collection of space entities as zones covering a specific purpose that is not necessarily system oriented is quite broad.
Not sure I follow, but we already have airQualityZonePoints
Yes I agree it just that they don’t appear in the hierarchy tree of the space here https://project-haystack.org/doc/appendix/space apart from hvac-zone-space and lighting-zone-space
Andy FrankThu 10 Aug 2023
I found the language around spaces and zones to be confusing as well.
It just seems that for a lot of architects and design engineers zone also means a collection of space entities
This is how we ended up modeling zones and spaces, and is largely based on how it gets defined in tools like Revit (you put physical spaces into logical zones).
The physical vs. logical part, I think, warrants separate concepts. I wasn't able to find much around this in the docs, but it seems like it's not captured exactly right?
annie dehghaniFri 11 Aug 2023
@Georgios, I think you might be getting at a need for terminology for groupings of room-spaces such as wings or suites, similar to what was raised in this post back in 2017?
RealEstateCore defines a "SubBuilding" type which maybe captures these larger-than-a-room, smaller-than-a-building space type ? That could be a adapted to Haystack for these spaces?
Yes I agree it just that they don’t appear in the hierarchy tree of the space here https://project-haystack.org/doc/appendix/space apart from hvac-zone-space and lighting-zone-space
I agree that IAQ and occ sensor points could exist outside of HVAC or Lighting zones. For example, if you have "standalone" or "IOT" occ or IAQ sensors. What we have done to solve this is to model the sensors as devices and tie the devices to the space via a spaceRef.
On a related note, I recently reviewed the docs, and the relationships in Haystack between points, equips, zones and spaces are a little unclear to me.
For example, if you have an HVAC equip serving a zone, what is the correct way to relate the zone and the equip? spaceRef? That gets a little muddy because spaceRef can also be used for the physical location of the equip. To solve this, we have added our own fooZoneRefs -- hvaceZoneRef and lightingZoneRef to tie HVAC equipment to zones and lighting points to zones while still being able to denote the physical location of assets with spaceRef
Frank SmitMon 14 Aug 2023
I agree with Georgios as an SI it is for us also confusing when to use zone, floor or space or even room. Mech Engineers and archtect here in Europe talk about that een zone or area is part of a building. A zone or floor can have individual spaces or rooms. But then it get confusing because we say here a space could be everthing like office (Officespace for rent) or gym even the blue sky. If we use room then we talk about a specified function in that space like Livingroom, Classroom or Bathroom. For the most mech engineers it is clear if we use Floor and then Zone in case there of open space office or it is a big open space like a cantinee and Room if there a cell offices or indivual rooms like bathRoom or DirectorsRoom. Then another point most controls manufactures are talking about a roomcontroller or roomcontrol solution and not about a space controller. In the LONmark functional Profiles they use spaceTemp. So is it spaceTemp or roomTemp what is right? I don't want to make it complex but in my opion it should so that you can find data from a sensor without looking on a drawing of course also for an equipment (on which floor and in which zone or room). Today there are also more types of equipment in a zone or room think about light or sunblind controller but also energyvalves or smart pumps. May be the hierarchy should be site → building→ floor →zone or room→ equipment→ points. To make Haystack more acceptable we should take notice of the comment of Annie "On a related note, I recently reviewed the docs, and the relationships in Haystack between points, equips, zones and spaces are a little unclear to me.
Matt SteenThu 7 Dec 2023
Here are the current definitions from ASHRAE 223P in case they're useful.
Space
There are two types of spaces. Physical spaces represent the architectural constructs in a building like rooms, auditoriums, corridors, etc. Physical spaces enclose (see s223:encloses) domain spaces. Domain spaces represent portions of a physical space that pertain to different building services. A physical space may represent a kitchen, but the lighting domain space it encloses describes the lighting area within the kitchen.
Physical Space
A portion of an enclosure that is distinct from other physical spaces.
Domain Space
A DomainSpace is a subclass of Connectable (see s223:Connectable) and represents atomic subdivision (or component) of a Zone and is associated with a domain such as Lighting, HVAC, etc. (see s223:EnumerationKind-Domain). DomainSpaces can be viewed as the endpoints of building services. A lighting domain space may be a part of an auditorium that receives light from a group of luminaires. An occupancy space may be a building area that is measured by occupancy sensors (see s223:OccupancySensor). An HVAC domain space may be part of an office or room that receives air from a VAV (see s223:VAV). An HVAC domain space may also be a significant waypoint in an air distribution system, like a plenum. Domain spaces generally have properties that pertain to control of the systems serving them (e.g., a lighting domain space may have an occupancy property for when the space is occupied).
Zone
Zones are collections of domain spaces of a specific domain grouped together from the perspective of building services or controls. Zones can be collected together into groups (see pub:zone-containment).
Frank SmitFri 8 Dec 2023
Matt,
is that 223P written by politicians? I have desided for my clients to keep it stupid simple site= is building or a part of building floor = floor or or level inside the building equip= an equipment that has a relation with a zone or a space zone= is apart of a floor without individual office rooms room= space in zone. We use the REF (ahuRef or hotWaterRef .. ) to make the relation and we look to it from the point of the end user. In our case is always to which equip is that sensor in that room or zone connected and that equipment is connect ot which plant or electric panel. If we get a floorplans from the installer we always start on the left corner and go clockwise with numbering of controllers. I am more struggling with having more IP devices in a room like 1 for the light 1 for the hvac 1 for sunblinds and 1 for enviroment Sensors and 1 for IP-based valves or actuators. These are all euipments with their own points so for me it would be more clear to have the logic of site,floor, zone,room,equips,points. But everybody have their way for doing things but it will be good to have a standard like in the old days from lonmark. Today it is very difficult to make the right choice for clients Bricks, Haystack, Google digital Buildings,RealEstateCore and a lot of other and it looks for me that the market has started the discussion like 20 years back abot lon,bacnet.modbus and knx.
Coen HoogervorstWed 25 Sep
I have read this thread with interest because we ourselves are also struggeling with the definitions of space's and zone's. In our situation we cannot 100% completely define what is the correct way to use referencing.
An example: we have a simple building with 2 floors and on each floor 2 rooms. Additionally we have 2 hvac zones: the rooms on the north side of the building are in hvac zone north, an the rooms on the south side are in the hvac zone south. Each room contains a temperature sensor which we would like to use to evaluate the euipment records related to each hvac zone.
The issue we have is already visible above, we would need multiple space refs on the room records to be able to link the temperature point (which are nested under the rooms using a spaceRef) to both a floor and a hvac-zone-space. The documentation is not clear on how to handle this situation.
We do see some documentation on hvacZonePoints, but it is not really clear to us how we can implement / use this. Does someone know how this is done the correct way or has some experience on this? We are thinking about creating specific subtypes of spaceRef like: roomRef, floorRef and hvacZoneRef.
I hope someone can help on this. Thanx!
Frank SmitThu 26 Sep
Coen,
It is indeed not clear what we do is we look how the lay out is of the controllers. If have a floor which is used a one big office space then we call it a zone. If on that floor are partion walls with multipal offices we use room. If each office has his own controller like a VAV or FANCOIL so the the equipment is a vav or fcu and the temperature is a room temperature(room and temp) . But if you have one controller doing more more rooms like with a chilled ceiling then we use as equipment vavZone or FCUzone and to the spacetemperature of each officeroom in that zone we give it a the tag room and temp because there is already equipRef you know that that temperture sensor is conntected to the controller which control that room in a zone. floor 01,vav101, a marker tag on the equipment will be vavZone of vav, point will have as marker tag zone or room, temp and also floorRef,equipRef,siteRef
I hope that this give you more clearance. If I see it good you are Dutch ? like me.
Brian FrankThu 26 Sep
This problem has been worked on the by the Labs WG and Annie developed an internal proposal, but has not been proposed to the wider community yet. We started that work in March, but kind of got dropped.
If your zones and spaces form a clean containment hierarchy then using spaceRef is the recommendation. The spaceRef would reference the most specific zone/space/room.
However, there are cases where zones and spaces overlap and do not form a clean hierarchy. The working proposal for that use case is to introduce a new zoneRef tag. Although we have gone back on forth of zoneRef vs hvacZoneRef, lightingZoneRef, etc
Georgios Grigoriou Thu 10 Aug 2023
I am trying to understand and clarify the use of zone tag and when to use system tag. I believe this needs clarification in the docs.
Here’s what I found:
The definition of the zone-space is associated only with system element. However, after discussing with architects and MEP engineers, I’ve noticed the following:
I welcome the thoughts of the community on that matter. Maybe a WG needs to be created where zone and system are clarified and further developed hand in hand . Happy to lead on that as well
Best Regards, Georgios Grigoriou
Brian Frank Thu 10 Aug 2023
Maybe we can tweak the language, but I think its pretty clear:
So zone is a geometry on a floor plan that is related to a system. But a system is the actual equipment related to the function. A zone is served by a system, but is not a system itself.
Not sure I follow, but we already have airQualityZonePoints
Georgios Grigoriou Thu 10 Aug 2023
Hi Brian,
I get the difference between zone and system. I guess my desire for clarification comes from the different terminology that people use in the industry.
It just seems that for a lot of architects and design engineers zone also means a collection of space entities
Example: North Wing comprises a collection of room entities in the north of a building. I saw that a couple of times in drawings as well defining a zone based on spaces covering a purpose that is not necessarily system oriented.
I guess this can be modelled as a collections/group of spaces in order to be fully compatible with the Haystack Ontology? Just wanted to check if we could harmonize standardise methodology as that the idea of referring to collection of space entities as zones covering a specific purpose that is not necessarily system oriented is quite broad.
Yes I agree it just that they don’t appear in the hierarchy tree of the space here https://project-haystack.org/doc/appendix/space apart from hvac-zone-space and lighting-zone-space
Andy Frank Thu 10 Aug 2023
I found the language around spaces and zones to be confusing as well.
This is how we ended up modeling zones and spaces, and is largely based on how it gets defined in tools like Revit (you put physical spaces into logical zones).
The physical vs. logical part, I think, warrants separate concepts. I wasn't able to find much around this in the docs, but it seems like it's not captured exactly right?
annie dehghani Fri 11 Aug 2023
@Georgios, I think you might be getting at a need for terminology for groupings of
room-spacessuch as wings or suites, similar to what was raised in this post back in 2017?RealEstateCore defines a "SubBuilding" type which maybe captures these larger-than-a-room, smaller-than-a-building space type ? That could be a adapted to Haystack for these spaces?
I agree that IAQ and occ sensor points could exist outside of HVAC or Lighting zones. For example, if you have "standalone" or "IOT" occ or IAQ sensors. What we have done to solve this is to model the sensors as devices and tie the devices to the space via a
spaceRef.On a related note, I recently reviewed the docs, and the relationships in Haystack between points, equips, zones and spaces are a little unclear to me.
For example, if you have an HVAC equip serving a zone, what is the correct way to relate the zone and the equip?
spaceRef? That gets a little muddy becausespaceRefcan also be used for the physical location of theequip. To solve this, we have added our ownfooZoneRefs --hvaceZoneRefandlightingZoneRefto tie HVAC equipment to zones and lighting points to zones while still being able to denote the physical location of assets withspaceRefFrank Smit Mon 14 Aug 2023
I agree with Georgios as an SI it is for us also confusing when to use zone, floor or space or even room. Mech Engineers and archtect here in Europe talk about that een zone or area is part of a building. A zone or floor can have individual spaces or rooms. But then it get confusing because we say here a space could be everthing like office (Officespace for rent) or gym even the blue sky. If we use room then we talk about a specified function in that space like Livingroom, Classroom or Bathroom. For the most mech engineers it is clear if we use Floor and then Zone in case there of open space office or it is a big open space like a cantinee and Room if there a cell offices or indivual rooms like bathRoom or DirectorsRoom. Then another point most controls manufactures are talking about a roomcontroller or roomcontrol solution and not about a space controller. In the LONmark functional Profiles they use spaceTemp. So is it spaceTemp or roomTemp what is right? I don't want to make it complex but in my opion it should so that you can find data from a sensor without looking on a drawing of course also for an equipment (on which floor and in which zone or room). Today there are also more types of equipment in a zone or room think about light or sunblind controller but also energyvalves or smart pumps. May be the hierarchy should be site → building→ floor →zone or room→ equipment→ points. To make Haystack more acceptable we should take notice of the comment of Annie "On a related note, I recently reviewed the docs, and the relationships in Haystack between points, equips, zones and spaces are a little unclear to me.
Matt Steen Thu 7 Dec 2023
Here are the current definitions from ASHRAE 223P in case they're useful.
Space
There are two types of spaces. Physical spaces represent the architectural constructs in a building like rooms, auditoriums, corridors, etc. Physical spaces enclose (see s223:encloses) domain spaces. Domain spaces represent portions of a physical space that pertain to different building services. A physical space may represent a kitchen, but the lighting domain space it encloses describes the lighting area within the kitchen.
Physical Space
A portion of an enclosure that is distinct from other physical spaces.
Domain Space
A DomainSpace is a subclass of Connectable (see s223:Connectable) and represents atomic subdivision (or component) of a Zone and is associated with a domain such as Lighting, HVAC, etc. (see s223:EnumerationKind-Domain). DomainSpaces can be viewed as the endpoints of building services. A lighting domain space may be a part of an auditorium that receives light from a group of luminaires. An occupancy space may be a building area that is measured by occupancy sensors (see s223:OccupancySensor). An HVAC domain space may be part of an office or room that receives air from a VAV (see s223:VAV). An HVAC domain space may also be a significant waypoint in an air distribution system, like a plenum. Domain spaces generally have properties that pertain to control of the systems serving them (e.g., a lighting domain space may have an occupancy property for when the space is occupied).
Zone
Zones are collections of domain spaces of a specific domain grouped together from the perspective of building services or controls. Zones can be collected together into groups (see pub:zone-containment).
Frank Smit Fri 8 Dec 2023
Matt,
is that 223P written by politicians? I have desided for my clients to keep it stupid simple site= is building or a part of building floor = floor or or level inside the building equip= an equipment that has a relation with a zone or a space zone= is apart of a floor without individual office rooms room= space in zone. We use the REF (ahuRef or hotWaterRef .. ) to make the relation and we look to it from the point of the end user. In our case is always to which equip is that sensor in that room or zone connected and that equipment is connect ot which plant or electric panel. If we get a floorplans from the installer we always start on the left corner and go clockwise with numbering of controllers. I am more struggling with having more IP devices in a room like 1 for the light 1 for the hvac 1 for sunblinds and 1 for enviroment Sensors and 1 for IP-based valves or actuators. These are all euipments with their own points so for me it would be more clear to have the logic of site,floor, zone,room,equips,points. But everybody have their way for doing things but it will be good to have a standard like in the old days from lonmark. Today it is very difficult to make the right choice for clients Bricks, Haystack, Google digital Buildings,RealEstateCore and a lot of other and it looks for me that the market has started the discussion like 20 years back abot lon,bacnet.modbus and knx.
Coen Hoogervorst Wed 25 Sep
I have read this thread with interest because we ourselves are also struggeling with the definitions of space's and zone's. In our situation we cannot 100% completely define what is the correct way to use referencing.
An example: we have a simple building with 2 floors and on each floor 2 rooms. Additionally we have 2 hvac zones: the rooms on the north side of the building are in hvac zone north, an the rooms on the south side are in the hvac zone south. Each room contains a temperature sensor which we would like to use to evaluate the euipment records related to each hvac zone.
The issue we have is already visible above, we would need multiple space refs on the room records to be able to link the temperature point (which are nested under the rooms using a spaceRef) to both a floor and a hvac-zone-space. The documentation is not clear on how to handle this situation.
We do see some documentation on hvacZonePoints, but it is not really clear to us how we can implement / use this. Does someone know how this is done the correct way or has some experience on this? We are thinking about creating specific subtypes of spaceRef like: roomRef, floorRef and hvacZoneRef.
I hope someone can help on this. Thanx!
Frank Smit Thu 26 Sep
Coen,
It is indeed not clear what we do is we look how the lay out is of the controllers. If have a floor which is used a one big office space then we call it a zone. If on that floor are partion walls with multipal offices we use room. If each office has his own controller like a VAV or FANCOIL so the the equipment is a vav or fcu and the temperature is a room temperature(room and temp) . But if you have one controller doing more more rooms like with a chilled ceiling then we use as equipment vavZone or FCUzone and to the spacetemperature of each officeroom in that zone we give it a the tag room and temp because there is already equipRef you know that that temperture sensor is conntected to the controller which control that room in a zone. floor 01,vav101, a marker tag on the equipment will be vavZone of vav, point will have as marker tag zone or room, temp and also floorRef,equipRef,siteRef
I hope that this give you more clearance. If I see it good you are Dutch ? like me.
Brian Frank Thu 26 Sep
This problem has been worked on the by the Labs WG and Annie developed an internal proposal, but has not been proposed to the wider community yet. We started that work in March, but kind of got dropped.
If your zones and spaces form a clean containment hierarchy then using spaceRef is the recommendation. The spaceRef would reference the most specific zone/space/room.
However, there are cases where zones and spaces overlap and do not form a clean hierarchy. The working proposal for that use case is to introduce a new zoneRef tag. Although we have gone back on forth of zoneRef vs hvacZoneRef, lightingZoneRef, etc