Missing equipment for physical sensors in water and air systems

[PeteHart]

While modelling Scandinavian heating systems, typically comprising both water and ventilation systems in the same building, we’re missing the possibility to add an Equipment representing the physical sensor to which the Point:Sensor sub class is associated.

While it is possible to abstract away the physical sensor by associating the Point:Sensor to an active equipment (such as a pump or a rotating heat exchanger) we find that we often have several physical sensors in a pipe or as part of the air handling system and they are in reality not associated with such a specific active equipment in the system.

We’ve considered to model using an Equipment:WaterDistribution in water systems and then associating the Point:Sensor to that Equipment. However, we find that in most of our cases we really want to be able to model all active equipment, including the physical sensors. Also we have not found a similar “air distribution” for air systems. Thought I suspect that the similar equipment to a water distribution (pipes) would be Equipment:AirPlenum?

Consequently, we suggest to either add a new sub class SensorEquipment (or SensingEquipment) under Equipment or alternatively add a new sub class Sensor under HVACEquipment. In either case the new sub class may include two subclasses; ActiveSensorEquipment and PassiveSensorEquipment reflecting upon the construction principles of the physical sensor.

If included in BRICK 1.4 we will backport to REC for our 4.1 release.

[efjerb]

Pr. @gtfierro's previous response to my issue (#521), it appears such a class already exists