The Smart Applications REFerence (SAREF) suite of ontologies forms a shared model of consensus intended to enable semantic interoperability between solutions from different providers and among various activity sectors in the Internet of Things (IoT), thus contributing to the development of data spaces.
SAREF is published as a set of open standards produced by ETSI Technical Committee Smart Machine-to-Machine communications (SmartM2M).
This ETSI portal for SAREF exposes the SAREF ontologies and points to the different SAREF-related deliverables.
SAREF is a suite of individually versionned ontologies that contains a core ontology, a set of reference ontology patterns that provide guidelines on how to use and extend SAREF, and different extensions for vertical domains.
SAREF Core specifies recurring core concepts in the smart applications domain, and the main relationships between these concepts. The figure below provides an overview of SAREF Core.
Different extensions were developed for distinct vertical domains. Each domain can have one or more extensions, depending on the complexity of the domain and the different needs:
Reference ontology patterns provide guidelines on how to use and extend SAREF, to describe any kind of applications-related data/information/systems in different verticals. Their aim is to help ensuring a homogeneous structure of the overall SAREF ontology, to speed up the development of extensions, and to improve semantic interoperability.
SAREF4SYST consists both of a core ontology, and guidelines to create ontologies following the SAREF4SYST ontology patterns. The core ontology is a lightweight OWL-DL ontology that defines 3 classes and 9 object properties.
The SAREF initiative started in 2014/2015 with a study requested by the European Commission, and continues in the ETSI Technical Committee Smart Machine-to-Machine communications (SmartM2M).
SAREF is developed based on the following fundamental principles:
While the SAREF ontologies are available and documented on this public portal, their development is led by ETSI members on the ETSI Labs in conformance with ETSI TS 103 673.
Non-ETSI members should soon be able to create an account to provide comments and suggestions via issues, or contribute to individual SAREF ontologies.
García‐Castro, R., Lefrançois, M., Poveda‐Villalón, M., & Daniele, L. (2023). The ETSI SAREF ontology for smart applications: a long path of development and evolution. Energy Smart Appliances: Applications, Methodologies, and Challenges, 183-215. (.bib)
(deprecated) Daniele, L., den Hartog, F., & Roes, J. (2015). Created in close interaction with the industry: the smart appliances reference (SAREF) ontology. In Formal Ontologies Meet Industry: 7th International Workshop, FOMI 2015, Berlin, Germany, August 5, 2015, Proceedings 7 (pp. 100-112). Springer International Publishing. (.bib)