What does a smart campus look like and how far away is it from being a reality?

Much like the widely anticipated vision for smart cities that has been conceptualized for years, the notion of a smart campus has recently risen to the surface of discourse around modernization and digital transformation. Almost a microcosm of what a fully-fledged smart city might one day look like – with data and sensors feeding into intelligent systems and processes – smart campuses present an opportunity to achieve many of these aims on a much smaller scale.

But a smart campus is more than about only improving educational standards or only embarking on digital transformation projects for the sake of modernization. It's also not about a collection of apps, platforms, and infrastructure existing in silos. Rather, it's an opportunity to join together plenty of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), biometrics, the internet of things (IoT), beacons, and even some elements of blockchain – in some cases – to build a cohesive miniature society that can serve students, faculty, and others in a digital-first manner.

What is a smart campus?

A smart campus is a technological trend or framework that lets educational institutions combine smart and emerging technologies with physical infrastructure to improve the quality of services, decision making and sustainability, according to foundational research published in Sustainable Cities and Society. There are different types of technologies that may feed into smart cities – including a smart microgrid, smart classrooms, and controls that manage the thermal and humidity properties of a building.   

"We propose a generic definition of smart campus that utilizes and integrates smart physical and digital spaces to establish responsive, intelligent, and improved services for creating productive, creative, and sustainable environment," said the researchers Nasro Min-Allah and Saleh Alrashed. 

"This definition provides the provision for integrating physical infrastructure with digital one. The proposed smart campus model is the combination of physical and cyberspace of the campus to be enhanced for improved services pertaining campus community."

Smart campuses incur plenty of benefits, including cultivating a digitally connected studying experience for students, and building a foundation for future digital transformation efforts that can be embarked on with ease. That's according to Deloitte principals Roy Mathew and Tamara Cibenko, who also argue that the benefits of smart campuses can be wielded to allow institutions to modernize sustainably while continuing to serve the constituents they currently serve. 

How to build a smart campus

Conceptually there are competing visions for how exactly a smart campus may be configured – and each model must also pay particular attention to the existing physical infrastructure, unless a smart campus is being created from scratch. Mathew and Cibenko have devised principles that should be considered when designing a smart campus. 

Firstly, any technologies that form the fabric of a smart campus should be effortless to use and deliver a strong user experience. There should also be multiple interfaces at the disposal of users, including voice, gesture, and touch. The focus, secondly, should fundamentally fall on the user, and user experience (UX) must be a central pillar to any efforts to design how the smart campus workflow operates. Any smart campus must also adopt a modular approach, meaning that the architecture has enough redundant flexibility to allow for changes and evolutions, as well as the addition or removal of technologies, disrupting the overall fabric of the ecosystem. Finally, smart campuses must be adaptable and scalable, allowing institutions to reach beyond the physical infrastructure and to other stakeholders – including elements like virtual classrooms. 

There are a handful of core technologies that should be at the heart of any smart campus. The microgrid is a key component, according to the historical research paper, and this can provide an uninterrupted power supply that ideally is derived from renewable sources. Plenty of universities already have their own microgrids, including New York University, which installed one in 2019. More advanced technologies may include holography, virtual reality (VR) and spatial computing, digital twins, and zero-carbon technologies. Some examples of projects the paper highlights include smart street lighting, recording attendance through smart cards, applying facial recognition to monitor behavior and attendance, providing 100% network connectivity, ensuring information is shared on social media quickly, and plenty more.

Another review, published this year, suggests core components of a smart campus include AI, IoT, cloud computing, and big data – and any campus that does not engage with these cannot be deemed a part of the smart campus trend. There are also five key areas that comprise a framework that the researchers designed. 'Smart environment', 'smart governance', 'smart society', and 'smart economy' are four pillars that all intersect with and are informed by 'smart technology and data'. 

Are we ready for smart campuses?

There are plenty of examples of initiatives around the world, with various projects hoping to make smart campuses a reality. Many legacy university and college campuses have also begun to acknowledge the need to transition to a smart campus – with CIOs and IT decision-makers at these institutions gearing up for change. 

The UK's University of Birmingham, for example, has published a comprehensive document outlining its vision of how it could transform itself into a smart campus. The university has so far piloted some technologies, appointed consultants to build a strategy, and engaged with others to share lessons and knowledge. The University of Central Lancashire, also in the UK, recently signaled it would transform its campus into a smart campus over time, starting with a project to replace analog cameras with digital CCTV cameras.

Plenty more examples exist, some going back a few years and others more forward-looking, but to what extent is there a fully-fledged smart campus? Much like our dream of smart cities, smart campuses are a work in progress – but there are plenty of green shoots out there all around the world, and the work to modernize educational institutions and the ecosystems in which they are the heart of remains an ongoing endeavor.