UTS tries to cut energy costs through IoT lab

UTS will try to conserve energy and cut operating costs for its engineering and IT faculty building in Sydney by pushing data collected from 3000 sensors through a new IoT innovation lab it unveiled today.

The university said in a statement it is setting up an internet of things lab with technology vendors SAS and Cisco.

The lab will use an "edge-to-enterprise IoT analytics platform" created by both vendors, which "combines SAS’ event stream processing, Cisco’s networking edge and data centre infrastructure technologies".

One of the lab's first use cases is to better understand UTS' own smart buildings.

Sensor data output from the faculty of engineering and IT building is already available to researchers and displayed around the building.

Much of the building’s design is already centred around smart energy usage, with an energy management system and building management system controlling essential functions.

It is hoped real-time data analysis from the IoT lab can improve the building’s energy consumption and costs.

However, researchers are also looking for broader applications outside the university campus.

Early research opportunities are said to include advanced manufacturing, agribusiness and healthcare.

Academics from the university will use machine learning and AI to design and verify data processing models that can then be applied to real-world industry problems.