University campuses – with all their facilities such as roads, shops, residential buildings, transport systems and other facilities such as gyms, pharmacies and banks and quite a large population – function in effect as tiny cities, according to an article in The Guardian. This resemblance with cities makes them an excellent environment for becoming a living lab, a test environment for smart cities.
In fact, many universities already are experimenting with smart city solutions on their campuses, reaching from a smart personalized digital assistant to equipping the entire campus and university stadium with sensors in order to monitor class attendance and crowd movement.
A big plus for university campuses functioning as smart city test beds is the fact that they are research institutions, being able to directly beta test and improve technologies and solutions. Besides, data gathered by the smart city sensors and tools could provide insights other types of academic research as well.
University campuses have, because of their relatively homogeneous populations, quite a straightforward goal, focusing on the well-being and performance of students. Whereas real cities have to deal with a way more diverse population which leads to a wider and more complex variety of goals.
As in every smart city initiative, privacy regulation needs to be taken into account and the focus should be on generating and analyzing anonymous data intelligently to improve student experience and performance.
