IoT Applications to Smart Campuses and a Case Study

Internet of Things (IoT) concepts are now being broadly investigated for actual deployment initiatives. Although ecosystem-wide architectures and standards are still slowly evolving and/or still lacking, some progress is being made; standardization fosters flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and ubiquitous deployment. Applications range from infrastructure and critical-infrastructure support (for example smart grid, smart city, smart building, and transportation), to end-user applications such as e-health, crowdsensing, and further along, to a multitude of other applications where only the imagination is the limit. This article discusses a specific example of an IoT application supporting Smart Campuses. Smart Campuses are part of a continuum that spans cities at the large-scale end to smart buildings at the small-scale end, and encompass universities, business parks, hospitals, housing developments, correctional facilities, and other real estate environments. The specific Use Case example covered in this article relates to an actual project to automate some key functions at a set of large campuses, but the nature of the campus is not directly revealed. After a review of the applicable IoT and control technologies, this Best Practices article describes technological solutions that were employed to support the requisite control functions and serves as an example for the applicability of IoT to Smart Campus applications.