Towards a Semantic Ontology for Occupant-Centric Building Control

Abstract: Occupant-centric control (OCC) balances energy efficiency and occupant comfort in buildings, yet methodological fragmentation hinders cumulative progress. This paper presents the Occupant-Centric Control Ontology (OCCO), a semantic framework that extends W3C/ETSI vocabularies with constructs for comfort metrics, control strategies, feedback provenance, and performance evaluation. Developed using the Linked Open Terms methodology with competency questions derived from OCC literature, OCCO unifies subjective occupant feedback with objective sensor data. Structural verification via SPARQL confirms query capability, with automated evaluation returning no remaining critical pitfalls and 88.2% FAIR compliance. OCCO provides a semantic foundation for comparable, reproducible OCC evaluation.