I wanted to address the topic of officially modeling "zone" to project haystack. It seems that this has been discussed in detail in the past yet nothing was resolved.

I am currently working with the Lab/Fume Hood working group. In talking to others and thinking about how to model this application, it seems that some type of "zone" modeling is needed before we can model lab areas. The reason for this is labs generally have multiple pieces of equipment associated within one zone. An example would be Supply Air Valves, Exhaust Air Valves, Fume Hoods, and VAVs. Currently I know many, including myself, have just changed the "navMeta" when using Skyspark, to include "floor" as an option for modeling zones. But it seems like it would be good to officially include zones in Project Haystack. Additionally Lab zones usually have points directly associated to the zone and not tied to any one piece of equipment, which is a current limitation we have right now.

The suggestion would to change the hierarchy to Site/Zone/Equip/Point. This matches most HVAC system designs for buildings where equipment and points generally are associated to zones. This seems to be the same case for lighting design as well. In addition, I suggest that there be the flexibility to have points be associated directly to the zones, not just equipment.

In past discussions, I know we could get even more detailed with modeling buildings, but for the primary focus of analytics, it seems like adding "zone" to modeling buildings will apply to most applications.

Zones is a critical topic that definitely requires a WG to flush out a model. I believes its way more complicated then just adding a level to the Site-Equip-Point tree though. Some equipment like HVAC terminal units have an obvious zone relationship and could work with a simple zoneRef. But central plants and equip such as meters, AHUs, etc don't necessarily have a clean zone mapping. Then you have to take into consideration HVAC zones, lighting zones, etc. Plus in BIM sometimes you make a distinction with a space (a "end user" geometry such as a room #, wing, etc) and a zone (a mechanical/system oriented view of geometries).

To really get that started we would need a WG champion, and I believe that group needs to have serious BIM expertise since the overlap/integration is really important.

I think it would be great to have this setup as a WG. It would be helpful going forward as we look to model all the various types of systems associated with a building. I would think for other WG it would help as well.

My suggestion for adding "zone" is for trying to solve the issue we have with modeling labs/fumehoods. Having at least "zone" level added would give a path going forward to complete this portion. I'm open to other suggestions for this as well.

There can't be a WG until a champion volunteers to lead the effort. Are you volunteering to the be Zone WG champion? :-)

BIM is not my expertise or else I would.

Zone is a difficult topic, with several, different, meanings:

• Haystack: Tag defining that a point of an equipment represent the conditions of the zone receiving service, as heating, cooling or lighting, from it. Example: “zone air temp sensor” of an ahu.
• BMS: location, the area where the equipment is located. Example: “Roof Chiller” (that gives cooling to the building).
• BMS: group of points that represent the ambient conditions of a physical space. Example: “Zone 3 temperature”
• Zoning: a physical space in the site – building – floor – room hierarchy, normally encompassing several rooms. Example “Clean zone” in a pharma lab building.

Furthermore, there are more “zone” meanings, related but not identical:

• BIM, that use IfcSite, IfcBuilding, IfcBuildingStorey and IfcSpace as main space division hierarchy, but where some BIM software packages use room (Revit) or zone (!) (Archicad) in place of ifcSpace.
• gbXML, the Green Building XML schema developed to facilitate transfer of building data stored in Building Information Models (BIM) to building engineering analysis tools, where zone is the element describing an HVAC zone that encompasses one or more building spaces (close to the Haystack meaning).

To avoid jumping in this complexity, in our building data models we use “Ambient Conditions” to the equipment that group the set of points that related to a physical space, or zone, but this is a temporary solution waiting for the Haystack "official" one.

So, you are fully right, there is a need of a WG discussing spatial hierarchies in Haystack, if possible not in contradiction to the pre-existing BIM standards, and probably this WG will take care of the way of grouping the space conditions related points.

In fact, after Haystack Connect it was a list of people of creating some focused WG, including one related to space hierarchy, but this WG has not been created yet.

Just noticed that there is an Upcoming NCS Webinar that will look at BIM implementation, August 17, 2017, from 2:00 – 3:00 pm ET. Maybe it would be of interest to someone in this working group or a follower.http://enews.nibs.org/t/r-9B6F8219E1A3B68E2540EF23F30FEDED