A generational change is taking place in building transportation systems as manufacturers and maintenance companies begin to integrate their products and services with the technologies of smart buildings and smart cities. Frequently this integration relies on the Internet of Things and cloud services. The diverse and heterogeneous nature of such collaborations requires a common shared semantic understanding of the complex and dense information that may be generated by transportation systems in buildings. The Standard Elevator Information Schema (SEIS) provides this in a format which is both machine and human readable. The role of the schema is to provide the 'vocabulary' for these collaborations. At the same time the schema specifies the properties, relationships and validation rules that define the information model, which could form the foundation upon which all elements of building transportation control and monitoring functions are constructed. SEIS is published under the Collective Commons licence and is free to download and incorporate into any product with the objective of reaching the broadest audience. This chapter discusses the origins and features of SEIS and provides a varied set of example applications. Consideration is also given to the issues of cyber security and data protection.

This paper presents an analysis of the requirements of a Global Dispatcher Interface for the control of a group of lifts. The information passed to and from the interface is defined as well as the common processing which will be executed on that information in order to generate the response. Using recognised software development methods, requirements are elicited from a consideration of the significant use cases and the architectural configurations which must be supported by the interface. The analysis concludes by defining the roles and responsibilities of the key objects of the software. A final section proposes relevant standard open technologies that avoid proprietary and potentially incompatible and high maintenance solutions.

This paper presents an overview of the design and development of a prototype Global Dispatcher Interface (GDI) for the control of a group of lifts. The role of the dispatcher is to assign passenger calls to the optimal lift in a group, as decided by a dispatcher algorithm. The GDI is independent of the underlying algorithm, which may be distributed remotely, and provides a standard means through which all interactions may occur. To warrant the “Global” appellation the GDI must support any of the currently available, as well as anticipated, call station modes, types and configurations of cars, topology of control equipment and buildings. The design process is a continuation of a recognised Software Development Lifecycle, centred on Use Cases in a UML model, the initiation of which is covered in a previous paper. Significant diagrams from the model are presented and discussed to illustrate the evolution of the prototype design. One of the requirements, resulting from analysis of the Use Cases, identifies that the GDI design must be compatible with a publish-and-subscribe architecture and a RESTful interface is selected for this purpose. Where possible, the prototype design uses open standards with an emphasis on demonstrating aspects that are specific to lift system dispatcher operation, while attempting to demonstrate independence from implementation details such as programming language, network protocols, etc. The Standard Elevator Information Schema is particularly relevant and fulfils these objectives. The operation of the working prototype, in conjunction with simulated lifts and passengers, is presented as a validation of the design.