The Smart Campus

As the methods and technologies for managing utilities become increasingly digitized, the university is actively developing and testing new solutions to acquire, transmit, store, analyze, visualize, and automate responses to the multitude of data that it manages on a daily basis. The growing culture of "Big Data" has already enabled Stanford to dramatically improve its business processes in a variety of ways, namely in managing sustainability metrics and identifying efficiencies in operations and maintenance.  With technology continuously advancing as a critical asset in managing campus infrastructure, Stanford is actively accelerating its “Smart Campus” capabilities. 

A number of university initiatives already include these Smart Campus solutions, supported by the extensive and recently upgraded IT infrastructure and security networks:

• The Stanford Energy System Innovations project includes an advanced controls system to maximize efficiency in operating the campus district energy supply system.
• A new district work center model in Land Buildings and Real Estate operations features centralized, mobile resources that are accessible across campus zones to better support customers and perform maintenance remotely.
• The Business Services team within the Department of Sustainability and Energy Management maintains a dedicated database to aggregate and archive all utility metered data at both the production and consumption level, enabling enhanced performance analytics.
• Stanford’s Facilities Energy Services Operations (FESO Shop) has transformed into a new Facilities Automation Center (FAC).  This group of IT and controls experts support Stanford’s Integrated Controls and Analytics Program (iCAP), which unifies the diverse campus building operations networks and platforms under a single enterprise system. This allows Stanford to quickly identify utility consumption trends both at a building and campus-wide level to achieve maximum savings potential from campus operations and produce flexible, customized applications that result in greater accessibility and performance insights.

The Smart Campus infrastructure and processes will enable all schools and departments to dramatically improve their business processes, encouraging industry innovation, standardization, and transferability in efficient building operations through central controls systems.  The underlying results that span each initiative and will continue to drive the effort include: 

• energy cost savings,
• maintenance cost savings,
• commissioning efficiencies,
• building occupant satisfaction,
• transferability of IT infrastructure,
• and network security and reliability enhancements.