Smart campus
Smart Campus explained
1. What is a smart campus?
A smart campus consists of several buildings on the premises of an educational institution and is equipped with sensors, data storage, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and other smart technologies. These technologies help regulate, for example, building occupancy, indoor climate and energy consumption, and optimise campus navigation. The result is a more efficient, sustainable and user-friendly campus for everyone.
2. What are the benefits of a smart campus?
Sustainability challenges, budget cuts and growing student and staff expectations are forcing education and research institutions to innovate. Stricter climate targets require more sustainable policies, while changing forms of education, such as hybrid and modular education, demand more flexibility. At the same time, students and staff expect a modern, comfortable environment with a healthy indoor climate and access to smart technologies, such as apps and dashboards, that make their work and studies easier. All this has to be achieved with less budget, further increasing the pressure on institutions.
A smart campus helps education and research institutions deal with these challenges.
3. What does a smart campus solve?
A smart campus provides practical answers to a variety of issues around, for example, local use, student housing, waste management and parking.
Concrete examples include:
- Study areas: 'Where can I currently find a quiet, warm and well-ventilated study area?'
- Examination: 'What environment is most suitable for taking exams for different types of students?'
- Space management: 'How many extra square metres do we need to meet growing demand?'
- Sustainability: 'How do we fine-tune our catering to avoid food waste?'
- Scheduling: 'How can we allocate classrooms more efficiently based on group size and facilities needed?'
A smart campus not only answers these questions faster, but also solves them more efficiently and sustainably. In doing so, you make your educational institution future-proof and more attractive for both students and staff.
4. Data sovereignty and flexibility on a smart campus
To build a future-proof smart campus, it is essential that educational and research institutions themselves remain in control of their data and technology. SURF's technology and architecture vision therefore revolves around openness and flexibility. By integrating systems, devices and sensors on the basis of open source and open standards, institutions avoid dependence on specific products or suppliers (vendor lock-in).
Cooperation within the education community plays a crucial role here. By jointly identifying requirements and carefully selecting suppliers, we ensure that systems fit together well - not only today, but also in the future.
To realise this vision, we apply the following principles:
- User-centred design: the needs of students, teachers and staff are central
- Interoperability: systems must be able to communicate seamlessly with each other
- Prevention of vendor lock-in: open standards ensure freedom of choice and flexibility
- Modular and scalable architecture: technology must be easy to expand and adapt
- Security & privacy by design: security and privacy are considered directly in the design.
You can find more information on how we design this within the Smart Campus project on the page Smart Campus in practice.
5. SURF: working together on a future-proof campus
For educational and research institutions that want to make their campus smarter, more sustainable and more user-friendly, collaboration is essential. We offer the following support in the SURF cooperative:
- Knowledge-sharing community: within our network, you can share knowledge, experiences and best practices with other institutions and experts;
- Innovation workshop: join pilots and experiments that help you discover which technologies best meet the needs of your students and staff;
- Smart technology: make use of concrete solutions and SURF services to make your campus more efficient and smarter.
More information on ongoing projects and collaborations can be found on the Collaborations and projects page.
6. Interaction Future Campus and Smart Campus
The SURF projects Future Campus and Smart Campus both focus on the future of education and research campuses, but differ in approach and time horizon:
- Future Campus looks to the distant future and develops strategic scenarios for what the campus might look like in 2040. This vision of the future places new demands on technology and infrastructure.
- Smart Campus focuses on technologies that are already applicable now and in the near future to make the campus smarter and more efficient, and tests them through pilots.
The projects complement each other through the interaction between vision and technology. The combination of these two perspectives provides insights that help shape future developments on the one hand, and make immediate improvements on the other. In other words: the long-term vision of Future Campus inspires the innovations within Smart Campus, while the concrete technological solutions of Smart Campus contribute to the realisation of those visions of the future.