Curtin Uni joins smart campus brigade

Curtin University plans to deploy sensors and analytics to better understand how buildings are used and how well courses are attended on campus.

The university is the latest to pursue a “smart campus” project, and has selected Hitachi technology to underpin it.

Chief operating officer Ian Callahan said the university hoped to “gather information on building trends, study patterns, and course attendance that can ultimately be used to improve student experience and enhance learning".

“We are effectively creating a living laboratory that is an open invitation to our own researchers and scientists from other universities to use our campus to discover and innovate with data-driven research,” he said in a statement.

In addition to sensor data, the university is also feeding video – likely CCTV – into its analytics engine, and indicated it would use “live face matching” technology.

The university last month said "facial recognition technology will ... play a significant role in on-campus safety and convenience – allowing for features such as key-less entry housing".

Other Australian universities are pursuing similar projects.

UNSW last year revealed it is deploying a network of sensors across its main Sydney campus to help manage operations and enable new modes of learning.

The University of Melbourne is exploring whether it can use its campus wi-fi access points as a kind of internet of things network to understand student movements.

In addition, Deakin University has previously revealed it is prototyping IoT to help its students navigate around campus.