Smart campus

The smart campus is one that learns by itself how to best support its "occupants". We create the desired situation in buildings based on data collected through sensors, automatically for education and research.

'Internet of Things on campus' exploration: SURF wants to facilitate IoT applications

The Internet of Things offers increasing opportunities. At the same time, there are still many questions. How can we choose the right platform that works for all applications?

Exploration

rapport IoT on Campus

Download Dutch, pdf (3 MB)

Cooperation idea

Within SURF, we work together to maximise the opportunities of ICT for education and research. Together with the knowledge institutions in the Netherlands, SURF wants to develop Internet of Things (IoT) applications specifically for education and research. In this way, education can be made more personalised and flexible, research improved and the smart campus concept further developed.

Challenges

A major challenge is that both for IoT sensors, IoT network and IoT data infrastructure, the current market offers a variety of possibilities. Protocols are evolving rapidly. There are still many non-interoperable IoT technologies and 'Internet of Things' and 'IoT platforms' remain containerised concepts. SURF believes that an IoT platform should provide an extensible middleware layer that allows data to be retrieved and processed from different sensors.

Exploration

This English-language document provides some examples of IoT pilots that have been conducted in the Netherlands and elsewhere, and gives an overview of the options for network protocols and IoT data platforms. Some options for SURF and its member institutions are also discussed.