Brick on Gabe Fierro

My shortest Brick validation+inference script yet

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My evenings these past few weeks have been spent working on ontoenv (a dev environment manager for ontologies) and shifty (a vibe-coded SHACL implementation). They are finally at the stage where I can get a short script working that does both inference and validation of a building model against the 223P SHACL shapes, and I’m pretty happy with how it looks!

The example model needs an `owl:imports` statement:

@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .

<http://example.com/ontoenv-example/> a owl:Ontology ;
 owl:imports <https://brickschema.org/schema/1.4/Brick> .

# etc... rest of your model

Here’s the short version of the script:

223P Validation Example (improved!)

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I recommend installing uv to handle Python dependencies and versions.

Here’s the new and improved script for doing 223P validation+inference in Python. This uses the new OntoEnv API to manage ontology dependencies, and I’m pretty happy with how it looks now. (I have one more simplifying change to make to the API that I’ll include in the next release; I’d like to just write s223_with_dependencies = env.get_closure(s223_id) to both get the ontology and its dependencies in one step.)

Brick Validation Example (with BuildingMOTIF)

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We will use the Brick model from the previous post:

Expand for Brick Model

@prefix brick: <https://brickschema.org/schema/Brick#> .
@prefix rec: <http://w3id.org/rec/> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix unit: <http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/> .
@prefix : <urn:tutorial/> .

<urn:tutorial> a owl:Ontology ;
 owl:imports <https://brickschema.org/schema/1.4/Brick> ;
 owl:imports <http://qudt.org/2.1/vocab/unit> .

:building1 a rec:Building ;
 rdfs:label "Building 1" .

:floor1 a rec:Floor ;
 rdfs:label "Floor 1" .

:room1 a rec:Room ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1" ;
 rec:isPartOf :floor1 ;
 rec:isLocationOf :thermostat1 .

:thermostat1 a brick:Thermostat ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Thermostat" ;
 brick:hasPoint :room1-sp, :sensor1, :room1-occ .

:room1-sp a brick:Air_Temperature_Setpoint ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Setpoint" ;
 brick:hasUnit unit:DEG_F .

:sensor1 a brick:Air_Temperature_Sensor ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Temperature" ;
 brick:hasUnit unit:DEG_F .

:room1-occ a brick:Occupancy_Sensor ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Occupancy" .

We first set up the BuidlingMOTIF instance. The easiest thing to do here is create an in-memory instance so you can start fresh each time. Keep in mind that it can take a few seconds to load some of the larger ontologies, so for “real” projects you should consider using a persistent instance.

Minimal Brick Validation Example (no BuildingMOTIF)

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This document provides a minimal example of how to validate a Brick model in Python without BuildingMOTIF. I would generally recommend using BuildingMOTIF for this purpose, but this example is useful for understanding the underlying processes.

Brick Model

A Brick model is a semantic model of a specific building. It is typically represented in the Turtle format. Here is an example of a simple Brick model:

@prefix brick: <https://brickschema.org/schema/Brick#> .
@prefix rec: <http://w3id.org/rec/> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix unit: <http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/> .
@prefix : <urn:tutorial/> .

<urn:tutorial> a owl:Ontology ;
 owl:imports <https://brickschema.org/schema/1.4/Brick> ;
 owl:imports <http://qudt.org/2.1/vocab/unit> .

:building1 a rec:Building ;
 rdfs:label "Building 1" .

:floor1 a rec:Floor ;
 rdfs:label "Floor 1" .

:room1 a rec:Room ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1" ;
 rec:isPartOf :floor1 ;
 rec:isLocationOf :thermostat1 .

:thermostat1 a brick:Thermostat ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Thermostat" ;
 brick:hasPoint :room1-sp, :sensor1, :room1-occ .

:room1-sp a brick:Air_Temperature_Setpoint ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Setpoint" ;
 brick:hasUnit unit:DEG_F .

:sensor1 a brick:Air_Temperature_Sensor ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Temperature" ;
 brick:hasUnit unit:DEG_F .

:room1-occ a brick:Occupancy_Sensor ;
 rdfs:label "Room 1 Occupancy" .

For the purpose of validation, the most important part is the 3 lines near the top declaring the ontology and its imports:

Point Mapping Overview

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For additional background on Brick, be sure to check out the reading list

This document attempts a brief summary of “point mapping” techniques and technologies, with a particular emphasis on mapping point labels from a building management system (BMS) into a Brick model.

What are Point Labels?

BMS points are the I/O elements for a building For a good primer on BMS points see this article . They are the identifiers used by software to read data from the building (e.g. sensor values) and to write data to the building (e.g. changing setpoints). Points are given labels in the BMS – think of these like variable names used by software to perform the read/write actions. These labels are largely ad-hoc constructions driven by vendor- or site-specific conventions.

Getting Started with Brick Research

Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This whole document is in-progress – be sure to check back!

Brick Research Reading List

So you want to do research on or with Brick – great! One common question I get or find myself answering is “what background do I need to get myself up to speed with using Brick at a level where I can do research?” This post attempts to answer that question.

For high-level background, please read through Chapter 2 of my PhD thesis – this is a decent overview of the information detailed below.

Brick Timeseries Data

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 17:15:14 -0700

Brick Timeseries Access

Here is a “completely” modeled zone air temperature sensor modeled in Brick

@prefix brick: <https://brickschema.org/schema/1.2/Brick#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix tag: <https://brickschema.org/schema/1.2/BrickTag#> .
@prefix : <urn:bldg#> .

:x a brick:Zone_Air_Temperature_Sensor ;
 brick:hasUnit unit:DEG_C ;
 rdfs:label "SODA1R410_ARS" ;
 # below, we will ignore the following properties as they
 # are orthogonal to the timeseries modeling discussion
 brick:isPointOf :hvac_zone_1 ;
 # automatically added
 brick:hasTag tag:Zone, tag:Air, tag:Temperature, tag:Sensor ;
.

How do we connect the temperature sensor x to a timeseries database? And what are the concerns we will need to handle?

Ontology Evaluation

Sun, 12 Jan 2020 17:14:12 -0700

This document establishes an empirical methodology for evaluating the 223 standard in order to codify the properties of 223 that make it successful and suitable for its intended use cases. We draw some inspiration from this paper, which established the empirical metadata evaluation methodology that drove development of the Brick ontology. The original Brick paper lays out three general properties of an ontology that make it successful for the building domain: completeness, extensibility and usability. We define each of these terms in the context of 223 and outline the specific evaluation procedures used.