A building management system includes a building system interface (24) configured to access a building system (20); an event service module (26) configured to access event data in the building system through the building system interface (24); a knowledge base (12) providing a model of the building system, the model including semantic descriptions of the event data, the semantic descriptions of the event data being arranged in an ontology; a semantic service module (30) in communication with the knowledge base (12); and a user interface (14) in communication with the semantic service module (30) and the event service module (26), the user interface (14) generating a user request to create an event filter having a filter criterion and report event data matching the filter criterion.