The world’s smartest campus has come to Dubai, according to the University of Birmingham who established the campus. On the University of Birmingham’s campus in the UAE, their brand new building is equipped with Internet of Things (IoT) technology that will automatically track how people are using offices, classrooms, and study and social spaces.
Data gathered will create a “living resource” that will tell researchers how best to manage university spaces.
Building efficiency has become a core tenant of sustainability, and as more pressure than ever is put on companies, campuses and individuals to go green, measuring an entity’s impact on the environment has become more important than ever.
Retrofitting existing buildings and building new structures that are capable of monitoring themselves has become one way to improve efficiency, but also monitor for inefficiencies and create models to improve sustainability.
“We have a way of controlling the living and working conditions inside the building, which, when working, ensures a good working space that’s in tune with its surroundings,” Professor David Sadler, the provost at University of Birmingham Dubai, told Arabian Business. “And the data that’s generated from the sensors itself becomes a kind of living resource.”
The living and working conditions are controlled via digital sensors that track how each space is used; the sensors also turn off lights behind the last to leave a room and maintain the temperature of unoccupied rooms. The building will also collect data on occupancy, air quality, temperature, and lighting requirements on a room-by-room level, Sadler said.
“We’ll then be able to evolve the internal elements of the building and make it a better building for the type of interactions, the type of education, and the type of research that we need to do,” Professor Tim Jones, the provost and vice principal at the UK’s University of Birmingham, told Arabian Business.
The campus, developed in partnership with Germany-based firm Siemens, is “combining digital sensor and analytics technologies, artificial intelligence, decentralised energy generation and storage, renewable energy and concepts that help change users’ behaviour to transform the university’s Edgbaston and Dubai campus into the world’s smartest campuses,” according to information from University of Birmingham’s website.
Jones and Sadler are hoping the new building can be used as a resource for how to manage buildings like this in the future. They’re also hoping what they learn can be applied to some of the Edgbaston’s buildings – some of which are over 100 years old.
“We’re starting to develop a roadmap to net-zero and this is one small element on that journey,” Jones said about the university’s sustainability goals.
