Key factor identification for energy consumption analysis

Abstract : Nowadays the economic, environmental and societal issues concerning energy consumption require a deeper understanding of the factors influencing it. The influencing factors could concern the technical characteristics of the systems, the operational conditions and usage of equipment, the environmental conditions, etc. To understand the main contributing factors a knowledge model with the influencing factors is formalized in the form of an ontology. This ontology model allows to distinguish in a general way the main concepts (i.e. factors) that show higher consumption trends. This way, a preliminary analysis reflecting the key influencing factors could be perform in order to focus later on a deeper analysis with data mining techniques. This paper focuses on the formalization of an ontology model in the marine domain for energy consumption purposes. Then, the approach is illustrated with an example of a fleet of diesel engines.