MATRYCS: Modular Big Data Applications for Holistic Energy Services in Buildings

 

MATRYCS aims at addressing emerging challenges in big data management for buildings with an open holistic solution aimed at creating a European approach to Business to Business platforms, able to give a competitive solution to the European stakeholders operating in this sector and to open new market opportunities.

 

The overall vision and main objective of MATRYCS is to define and deploy a Reference Architecture for Buildings Data exchange, management and real-time processing, and to translate this reference architecture into an Open, Cloud-based Data Analytics Toolbox (MATRYCS Modular Toolbox). It will enable AI-based cross-sector analytics for smart energy-efficient buildings, based on seamless data-information-knowledge exchange under respective sovereignty and regulatory principles. Overall, the technical solution follows the MATRYCS Reference Architecture and it consists of three main pillars:

1. The MATRYCS-GOVERNANCE encompassing modules related to data collection, semantic annotation and distributed storage
2. The MATRYCS-PROCESSING including ML and DL models
3. The MATRYCS-ANALYTICS providing a set of analytics tools as a service (SaaS/PaaS/IaaS models). On top of the MATRYCS platform, the project defines four main categories of buildings’ services that will be developed and tested in the context of Large-Scale Pilots (LSPs).

MATRYCS will enable reliable and effective policymaking, as well as support the creation and exploitation of innovative services through the utilisation of a wide variety of data, for the safe and effective operation of buildings. The MATRYCS Modular Toolbox will be able to handle heterogeneous types of data (open data, sensor/IoT, historical data, etc.) from multiple domains and sources. The collected data will be processed to create different business cases considering the interaction of different stakeholders and scales that will be emerged through the LSPs (grouped under the MATRYCS-PERFORMANCE / DESIGN / POLICY / FUND categories).

   

MATRYCS aims to capitalise and combine existing modern technological breakthroughs in the areas of the DLTs / blockchain, ML / DL and big data, in order to develop a new decision-making and data analytics solution for energy-efficient buildings. MATRYCS will realise a holistic, state-of-the-art AI-empowered framework for decision-support models, data analytics and visualisations for Digital Building Twins and real-life applications. The resulting MATRYCS Modular Toolbox is expected to have a significant impact on the building sector and its lifecycle, as it will have the ability to be utilised in a wide range of use cases under different perspectives, including, but not limited to: monitor and improve the energy performance of buildings; facilitate the design and development of building infrastructure; support policy making and policy impact assessment; de-risk investments in energy efficiency.

Concerning real-time building data, MATRYCS vision is to consider the physical building more than a data generation point. MATRYCS envisages the building entity also as a perfect point-of-presence for hosting and fully realise the most modern distributed computing paradigm extending the cloud to the edge, by offering both local computational power and storage capacity to services and functions that may that need ultra-low latency, as well as local processing without leveraging on core cloud remote services.

The MATRYCS Framework underlying architectural concept is presented in Fig. 1.4.

   

Acknowledgement

The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under grant agreement no 101000158.

 

Announcements

The MATRYCS project (Modular Big Data Applications for Holstic Energy Services in Buildings) started on October 1, 2020. The project is funded by the EU and runs for three years until September 30, 2023.