Smart Sustainable Campus
_{Challenges and Approaches using Edge-based system design}

Technology is improving fast; however, many campuses remain as “unconnected” as ever as on date due to which, there are many challenges faced today in the campus environment as shown in (Fig 1). To overcome the challenges, certain technologies have become crucial in the campus environment for creating a better collaborative platform between students and faculties. Lowering costs and improving the student experience are the underlying drivers for adopting many technologies in the campus initiatives to make the campus safe, secure, and green. A campus network, therefore, needs to have the ability to dynamically add or subtract certain services; able to easily connect and configure the sensors & actuators as plug-n-play, ability to scale the campus network with greater connectivity to enable more smart services; manage campus data traffic based on traffic fluctuations, and dynamically reinforce certain critical policies to provide a better experience to students, research scholars, and faculties.

This article aims at offering an expert perspective on key technology aspects of smart campus based on EDGE concept (Fig 2) that facilitates smart learning, smart safety & security and sustainable living for students, research scholars and faculties alike, promoting improved learnings via fruitful application of technology, improved engagement, ownership, and entrepreneurial skills laying the foundation for greater success in their career ahead. The smart campus is a growing concept across many educational institutions and an essential part of any higher educational institute, not only to offer enhanced learning experiences but also to efficiently manage campus operations such as building maintenance, energy saving, surveillance, parking, and environmental pollution to save time, costs & precious resources in the long-term.

Major universities across the globe are undergoing a digital transformation, working on migrating their existing ecosystems into Industrial-IoT based systems designed to improve operational efficiency as well as safety. A university campus is expected to perform multiple purposes such as providing integrated environments, learning, and living. Campus maintenance teams need help to monitor overall campus operations and reduce the complexity of certain day-to-day operations, downtime, and reactive maintenance.

Some of the key constituents of the “smart campus” are listed below: –

• Electric power/energy management for various subsystems on the streets and buildings around the campus
  • Monitoring each point in the power grid by analysing real-time load on the power system to detect potential failures and reduce monthly bills.
  • Digital map of underground campus infrastructure (electrical/internet wiring, water pipes) for quick tracking of critical issues to avoid any major damage to existing services
• Smart building and entire campus monitoring and management with automated security control and surveillance of incidents such as:
  • Misbehavior of students inside the campus
  • Trees falling during rainy season
  • Fire and accidents
• Connected transportation mechanism for students using college busses
  • Mechanism to track EV/non-EV fleet, charging efficiency and monitor utilization
  • Bus tracking using GPS
  • Monitoring the speed inside and outside of the campus from a safety standpoint
• Detecting gas leakages in chemical laboratories
• Automatic garbage disposal (waste bin management)
• Critical assets tracking
• Automatic street lighting system with efficient power management
• Pollution-free environment
  • Monitoring the carbon footprint and air quality of the campus
• Effective utilization of manpower and resources through video surveillance of daily works
• Predictive maintenance of various equipment’s like power transformers, electric motors, diesel generators
• Protective and preventive healthcare system for students and elder faculty members
• Regenerative systems on footpaths (i.e., generation of power, when students/staff/workers walk on the respective footpath inside the campus)
• Authentication of users entering library, reply to their inquiries, locate books using location-based service and by delivering the respective location details on students/faculties smartphone
• Wastewater management to prevent direct and indirect infectious diseases
• Campus program governance and reporting to key management stakeholders
• Better wireless/network connectivity and communications between students and staff for work collaboration
• Connectivity between devices and workers (ex: smart jacket) enabling new experiences and improving operational efficiency
• Rainwater harvesting for all buildings within the campus to enhance water storage
• Water sprinkle with timer control for efficient water management in gardening systems
• Overhead water tankers with flow controller mechanism without human interference
• Cycle dock (i.e., bicycle sharing system) using student’s identity cards enabled with RFID
• Smart navigable notice boards for students
• Food quality monitoring and waste management in cafeteria
• Smart parking
• Solar panel-based energy generation/management/distribution for classrooms/streetlights
• Detection of distinct sounds such as glass breaking to alert campus security of location and reduce burglaries.
• Online booking facility (e.g., for classrooms, halls, guest house, and libraries)

Even though some of the highlighted applications in the context of security exist in certain universities, however, the limitations found is the security-based ecosystem like access control systems, intrusion alarms, panic buttons, and video surveillance, is that these systems are isolated from each other. The smart campus design can integrate these disparate security technologies into a unified system, allowing the creation of integrated safety and security services. Multiple services like lighting, surveillance, fire & emergency alarms, and smart ID cards should work together to make automated real-time decisions that keep everyone on the campus safer. With emerging technologies dramatically changing the way we live, the smart campus design should be able to deliver a better lifestyle by integrating a university’s environment, security system, parking, building, lighting, and classrooms into a smart environment, with smart security, smart building, smart parking, smart lighting, smart classroom, and so on. This creates value for students, research scholars, and staff by enabling greater safety, and providing more smart services, thereby increasing the attractiveness of the campus, and a clear positioning as ambassadors of green environment/sustainable living.

Case for Edge

A quick look at the architectural approaches employed for such solutions indicates that most of the IoT network deployments happening today on campuses are designed around centralized architecture – the cloud-based model, where input sources like sensor nodes installed in the campus, transmit information captured from the physical environment to a public cloud platform hosted outside of the campus network by a third-party service provider. All these transmitted data are processed and stored at a single location on the public cloud platform, which helps to simplify the process of data management and post-processing. However, the drawback with this cloud-based approach is that the large amounts of data that need to be transmitted from various sensor nodes and gateways across the campus network, via internet, to the cloud platform, increases data traffic, thereby constraining network bandwidth, and resulting in higher latency. Processing IoT data on the cloud platform, exclusively for time-sensitive campus applications like theft prevention, fire, and accidents, is not an efficient solution.  A campus network generates a huge volume of data every day. And with thousands of sensors deployed in a larger campus environment, it would obviously lead to higher network bandwidth, latency, and a need for more data storage to handle such a massive amount of data. In fact, some of the data generated can be ignored at the source itself – i.e., at the Edge sensor node – and does not need to be transmitted to the cloud. For example, 98% of video feeds in surveillance systems deployed in campus and buildings today go unseen; consequently, 95% of incidents are missed.

Therefore, it is imperative for the architectural approach to address campus network design requirements like low latency, quick data processing, better energy efficiency, zero touch device provisioning, data security, and cost reduction. To address some of these challenges, the approach proposed in this article for the smart campus is based on the Edge concept as shown in fig 3, which covers Edge sensor nodes, an Edge gateway and Edge cloud. Building a smart campus requires a modular design approach and the off-loading of many cloud functionalities on the Edge. As campuses connect to third parties for various services, securing a university’s proprietary information and other critical institutional assets becomes exponentially more difficult, and meeting regulatory requirements becomes more complex. The smart campus approach should therefore have an integrated cybersecurity management framework that better allows network infrastructure to identify threats and vulnerabilities and implement cybersecurity solutions to manage attacks and risks. A cybersecurity capability should be an integral part of a smart campus framework, adhering to certain regulatory standards to establish a better security ecosystem, and providing safety services to students and the overall campus network infrastructure by protecting it from attackers.

So, there is a need to address campus network design requirements like low latency, quick data processing, better energy efficiency, zero touch device provisioning, data security, and cost reduction. To address some of these challenges, the approach considered for the smart campus is based on the Edge concept as shown in fig 2, which covers Edge sensor nodes, an Edge gateway and Edge cloud. Building a smart campus requires a modular design approach and the off-loading of many cloud functionalities on the Edge. As campuses connect to third parties for various services, securing a university’s proprietary information and other critical institutional assets becomes exponentially more difficult, and meeting regulatory requirements becomes more complex. The smart campus approach should therefore have an integrated cybersecurity management framework that better allows network infrastructure to identify threats and vulnerabilities and implement cybersecurity solutions to manage attacks and risks. A cybersecurity capability should be an integral part of a smart campus framework, adhering to certain regulatory standards to establish a better security ecosystem, and providing safety services to students and the overall campus network infrastructure by protecting it from attackers.

To address security along with the connectivity and interoperability challenges around interconnecting and intersecting different technologies and protocols, the smart campus must be interoperable in the overall end-to-end ecosystem. An Edge gateway is required to address all connectivity challenges on the southbound interface, and the design of that Edge gateway should be protocol-agnostic – allowing it to communicate with different flavors of Edge sensor nodes working on different wireless technologies like Wi-Fi, Thread, RFID, BLE, Zigbee, and LoRa for managing campus operations, and with different middleware protocols like CoAP (Constraint Application Protocol), ONVIF(Open Network Video Interface Forum), MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and streaming protocols like RTSP/RTP/RTCP, HLS, HTTP-PD, MPEG-DASH to handle any possible combination of use cases for managing campus activities.  The technologies identified for the smart campus should be simple to connect as a plug-and-play concept, for ease of use and seamlessness interactions, despite the lack of standards support that exists today in the IoT market. The Edge concept also increases the level of interoperability between emerging connected devices and older legacy devices. It converts communication protocols used by older systems into a language which the newly designed connected devices can understand. Interoperability for the smart campus based on Edge is key to operational efficiency and enables error-free transmission and translation.

To address security along with the connectivity and interoperability challenges around interconnecting and intersecting different technologies and protocols, the smart campus must be interoperable in the overall end-to-end ecosystem. An Edge gateway is required to address all connectivity challenges on the southbound interface, and the design of that Edge gateway should be protocol-agnostic – allowing it to communicate with different flavors of Edge sensor nodes working on different wireless technologies like Wi-Fi, Thread, RFID, BLE, Zigbee, and LoRa for managing campus operations, and with different middleware protocols like CoAP (Constraint Application Protocol), ONVIF(Open Network Video Interface Forum), MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and streaming protocols like RTSP/RTP/RTCP, HLS, HTTP-PD, MPEG-DASH to handle any possible combination of use cases for managing campus activities.  The technologies identified for the smart campus should be simple to connect as a plug-and-play concept, for ease of use and seamlessness interactions, despite the lack of standards support that exists today in the IoT market. The Edge concept also increases the level of interoperability between emerging connected devices and older legacy devices. It converts communication protocols used by older systems into a language which the newly designed connected devices can understand. Interoperability for the smart campus based on Edge is key to operational efficiency and enables error-free transmission and translation.

As depicted in fig 4, there are four core components required for creating a smart campus solution design based on the Edge concept:

1. Edge sensor node
2. Edge gateway
3. Edge cloud
4. Mobile/web applications based on a react native framework – i.e., a cross-platform approach

The key principle behind the need for Edge architecture for a campus is to seamlessly manage and control various technologies manufactured by different OEMs to provide digital and smart services, where the Edge serves as a central point to provide connectivity between:

• Edge sensor nodes based on Zigbee, Wi-Fi,RFID & LoRa technology that communicates with an Edge gateway which covers:
  • HVAC (heating, cooling, air flow monitoring, fresh air intake management, etc.) over LoRa
  • Doors (opening, closing, locking, jammed door detection etc.) over LoRa
  • Lights (on/off, dimming, day/ night setup implementation etc.) over Zigbee
  • Batteries for power back-ups (charge / discharge monitoring details gathered over LoRa)
• Edge cloud connects with multiple Edge gateways over Wi-Fi/Ethernet as well as with other flavors of Edge nodes for quick data processing and device management OTA within the campus
  • Surveillance Cameras as Edge wireless nodes over Wi-Fi (for theft, crowded areas, etc.,)
  • Digital Signage (banner ads and product suggestions) over Wi-Fi
  • Augmented Reality for on-campus navigation over Wi-Fi
• Students’ mobile phones that connect over Wi-Fi for viewing the LMS (library management system) and receiving important emergency alerts

Efficient use of resources, optimized costs, improved learning experience and the vision for a green, safe, secure campus are the underlying drivers for technological interventions towards building smart sustainable campuses. Today, the smart sustainable campus has become an emerging trend in the IIoT industry, where it not only requires the development of wired and wireless infrastructure inside the campus, but also requires the enablement and deployment of new services capable of supporting multiple, scalable (Edge-based), and interoperable (cross-system) applications. To realize the vision of next-generation smart sustainable campus, industry-academia collaborations around emerging technologies like 5G, Edge computing, data analytics, AI, machine learning, LoRa and other supporting middleware protocols/frameworks can be effectively leveraged, providing opportunities for students and research scholars to co-create innovative new solutions and services. Enabling Edge-based solutions as a horizontal architecture for a smart sustainable campus ecosystem will lead to the creation of various new services, as well as improving many that already exist.

Vijay Anand

Senior Director, Technology, and Chief IoT Architect, Capgemini Engineering

Vijay plays a strategic leadership role in building connected IoT solutions in many market segments, including consumer and industrial IoT. He has over 25 years of experience and has published 19 research papers, including IEEE award-winning articles. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Crescent Institute of Science and Technology, India.