Overview

The DCH platform uses semantic modelling under the hood. In particular it is built to work with models conforming to the BRICK Schema ontology.

DCH supports site and building models adhering to BRICK Schema version 1.2.1. DCH does not support all features of BRICK 1.2.1, and in some areas DCH has extended BRICK 1.2.1 to increase usability of models. This documentation describes the limitations and extensions to BRICK 1.2.1 that models uploaded to DCH must adhere to.

DCH is 'Single Building Model' centric

One of the fundamental restrictions in DCH is that in DCH Sites and Buildings must be modelled and uploaded individually. Outside of DCH a typical BRICK model could contain declarations of a site and several buildings and have elements in them that cross reference between things in those sites and buildings. It is even possible to model Portfolios or Regions in a single BRICK model. In DCH however, all model are separated and a model can only contain a single declaration of a Site or a single declaration of a Building. To represent a site with several buildings in DCH you need several models. These models can cross reference between components in Sites and Buildings or Buildings and Buildings as described above, so this DCH restriction is a difference in "packaging" rather than a difference in what can be semantically modelled.

From a modelling perspective it is possible to automatically translate a traditional brick model that declares a site and multiple buildings into a set of separate models compatible with DCH without loss of information. Future DCH may provide that translation automatically on model upload.

A consequence this Site and Building model focus, there are two BRICK classes that are subsequently not supported:

brick:Portfolio - see further details at DCH Support of Collection Classes, and

brick:Region .

Future DCH may provide portfolio management of Sites and Buildings as part of the platform - i.e., outside of the semantic modelling space.