Enabling Interoperability of Urban Building Energy Data Based on OGC API Standards and Citygml 3D City Models

This paper presents an investigation into the interoperability of 3D building energy data management, delivery, processing, and visualization via web clients using Open Geospatial Consortium - Application Programming Interface (OGC API) standard-based data models and web interfaces. Specifically, the OGC API - 3D GeoVolumes enable access to 3D city model geometries and semantics on the web, the OGC API - Features support the 2D version of the same geospatial data, the OGC API - Processes are used for CityGML analytics and building energy computation with the SimStadt urban simulation software and the OGC SensorThings API is utilized to manage related spatiotemporal or time-series datasets. The efficacy of this approach has been demonstrated in the OGC Testbed 18 Innovation Program, which highlighted the capacity of OGC API web services to synchronize building energy data and computation results between client and server for the case study of Helsinki, Finland, and Montreal, Canada. The advantages of using OGC API services for 3D building energy data interoperability are discussed, and it is suggested that the use of OGC API be promoted to the general public as well as extended to other domains and on a larger scale in future research.