How college leaders can make the most of the Internet of Things

Creating the ‘Smart’ Campus

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The thousands of sensors embedded in today’s generation of thermostats, light switches, air blowers, and other equipment — an interconnected system known as the

Internet of Things (IoT) — can show how well a university’s infrastructure is working and how effectively its physical plant is being used. Few institutions, however, are geared up to fully reap the

benefits of such a “smart” campus.Accordingly, experts say institutions

need to be more intentional about man-aging the Internet of Things and relat-ed systems. “There’s no opting out of IoT in higher-education institutions,” says Chuck Benson, director of IoT risk- mitigation strategy at the University of Washington. “You can’t just say I’m not going to do IoT.”

But managing a university’s IoT sys-tems comes with significant demands. In-stitutions serious about realizing the po-

Creating the ‘Smart’ Campus

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=IT in a Class of Its OwnCenturyLink helps build your smart campus from the network up with intelligent, secure connections. Our connectivity solutions help:

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• Manage threats throughout the campus

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tential efficiencies that IoT data can yield need to rethink staffing, expand their data analytics capacity, and weigh profound questions about privacy and security. Perhaps most importantly, they need to clarify what value they expect to reap from the IoT and what their vision is for a smart campus, and develop a strategy for deliv-ering on those expectations.

DATA STREAM

Don Guckert, associate vice president for fa-cilities management at the University of Iowa, frames a simple example of how the Internet of Things can improve plant maintenance. One benefit of focusing on the IoT, he says, is that it helps staff look at systems rather than just at components.

In the traditional model, he suggests, if a given piece of equipment fails it would be re-placed. If it fails again a few months later, it would be replaced again. Both repairs would be isolated, one-off occurrences. With the IoT,

however, the institution could collect and track data from sensors in that faulty equipment that conceivably could show that a larger, chronic problem exists.

Under such a scenario, Guckert says, “the In-ternet of Things would provide a data stream that can help us make repair-or-replace types of decisions.” Scale that kind of transaction, and an institution might find insights that could significantly help improve building main-tenance and operational practices.

That all may sound straightforward, but there are potential stumbling blocks. Even in-stitutions that are highly sophisticated about managing data haven’t yet perfected ways to collect and triangulate the abundant informa-tion that IoT sensors provide.

Stanford University, for example, has been avidly exploring ways to harvest and analyze data from across its increasingly digitized in-frastructure. Its goals include improving busi-ness processes, standardizing building opera-

With the IoT, “data management is surprisingly complicated,” says Gerry Hamilton, director of facilities energy management at Stanford U.

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tions, and saving money on the costs of both energy and maintenance. But in that work, says Gerry Hamilton, director of facilities energy management at Stanford, “data management is surprisingly complicated.”

For example, Hamilton notes, while software packages exist that effectively pull data from sensors in buildings, “every one I’ve seen so far is pretty much a one-off solution, and only meets the immediate needs of that application. So, if I’m doing fault detection and diagnostics on the HVAC data from that building’s auto-mation system, that’s going to work fine.” But if Stanford wants to integrate that data into larger software systems, he says, “that’s going to be a whole other project.”

“Data management is the monster lurking beneath the surface that is, in my opinion, the biggest bottleneck to ad-vancing automation and smart analytics,” Hamilton says. “What it gets down to is data really can’t flow as fluidly or as ubiquitously as we need it to. I think we’re going to get there, but standards have to be put in place to control what devic-es conduct to what systems and what kind of automation can get set.”

Large-scale efforts to collect data also raise security and pri-vacy issues. The sensors in the Internet of Things create and multiply potential channels that hackers could exploit. “Nowadays the default assumption is that any new piece of intelligent equipment is going to be connected through a network,” says David Allen, director for enterprise sys-tems at Pacific Lutheran University. Fearful that smart devices could provide new avenues for online attack, Allen asks, “if the device is compromised, what risk does that pose to the rest of the network or to certain protected sys-tems?”

The fact that IoT sensors can collect data about student and staff behaviors raises pri-

vacy and even ethical issues. Allen, for exam-ple, asks, “If somebody has expressed concern about a student’s mental health, can or should we use these systems to monitor a student for attendance and participation in class and where they’re going on campus? Just because we can potentially do those things, should we?”

WILL IT SAVE MONEY?

What kind of payoff can institutions expect from investing in IoT systems? Benson says that institutions need to ask the right ques-tions for determining their ROI from the In-

ternet of Things. “Does this add value, and what value are we expecting out of this?” he asks. “What problem are we trying to solve? And then, on the cost side, what’s your total cost of ownership?”

Some of an institution’s re-turn on IoT investment might come from facilities that use energy more efficiently. The University of Washington, for example, harvests data from some 150 monitoring points as part of a pilot effort to measure energy and operational perfor-mance in some of its buildings.

Norm Menter, a member of the university’s facilities staff who has been active in its sus-tainability efforts, told EdTech magazine that UW is reaping

$5 in future energy savings for every dollar invested in an advanced metering system and other improvements. In just one building, he said, improved control of energy use now saves some $33,000 per year — savings that are expected to total about half a million dol-lars over the projected 15-year lifespan of dig-ital controls and related equipment.

Stanford has been testing better use of sen-sors and data on select buildings. As it updates controls in buildings, Hamilton says, “we’re implementing modern sequences of operations to get basic energy savings, but also we’re put-

Chuck Benson, director of IoT risk-mitigation strategy at the U. of Washington.

U. of Washington

ting platforms in place that will allow smarter an-alytics to sit on top of them. We anticipate getting additional energy savings from that.”

Hamilton notes that upgrading the controls in a given building might yield 15 percent in saved energy, while use of smart analytics could add another 10 percent in savings. He says Stanford might save 5 percent more by identifying broken equipment, yielding a total 30 percent in energy savings. As they collect more data, Hamilton and colleagues also plan to delve into cost savings for operations and maintenance.

STAFFING THE IOT

Built into the physical plant, the sensors in the IoT are mostly the province of facilities manage-ment, but the data they can provide suggests a crit-ical role for information technology. But at many institutions, those two functions are siloed and haven’t learned how to cooperate effectively. Man-

aging the Internet of Things means that institu-tions have to figure out how to get departments that may have different cultures to collaborate well. “No matter how hard and difficult you think controls and IT networks and data-management analytics are, organizational improvement is going to be over half of your battle,” Hamilton says.

To support their work around the IoT, some in-stitutions have started to evolve new staffing ap-proaches. At the University of Iowa, Guckert sees a growing role for data analysts in the institution’s facilities-management operations.

Benson’s position at the University of Washing-ton is relatively new and is supported and funded by the vice presidents of the university’s IT and fa-cilities departments. Benson serves both groups.

Resisting the temptation to add smart-campus specialists, Stanford has avidly retrained staff — for example, helping facilities staff understand IoT-related technology and helping IT staff better

U. of Iowa

At the U. of Iowa, Don Guckert, associate vice president for facilities management, sees a growing role for data analysts in the college’s facilities operations.

understand facilities hardware and systems. “You can do a lot with your existing staff if you align their roles and incentives properly,” Hamilton says.

GOALS FOR A SMART CAMPUS

To make the most of the Internet of Things, Benson urges institutions to start by identifying what goals they have for their own version of a smart campus and what return they expect from an investment in the IoT. Campus leaders, he says, need to make sure they have the right people managing the IoT, including helping staff from different departments to bridge whatever cultural differences they might have.

Institutions might start such work with relative baby steps. “My advice is just try fault detection diagnostics on a single building,” Guckert says, re-ferring to an analysis that identifies anomalies in a building’s performance. “That’s the first step to-ward understanding the potential of IoT.”

Allen of Pacific Lutheran urges college leaders to think carefully about how they plan to use the data they can reap from the IoT and about who’s in charge of how data are collected and used. “At a high level, the institution needs to decide who’s going to be thinking about those things and who’s going to take responsibility for it and also who’s going to lead the charge of integrating the [IoT] systems.” Whether that’s the IT staff, facilities maintenance, or another office will depend on the institution, he says.

The key challenge for top leaders at institutions might be just having the courage to take the first step into capitalizing on the benefits of the IoT. Hamilton says “you can’t farm out the smart vi-sion” for a given institution. Whether it’s to save money on the cost of energy or maintenance, or perhaps to advance an institution’s commitment to sustainability, it’s incumbent on university lead-ership, he says, to articulate what improvements they hope the institution can achieve and encour-age staff to work toward those goals.

College leaders often have the best vision for what’s going to make their institution work smart using the IoT, Hamilton says, adding that “some-body has got to encourage the university to take that bold next step.”

Creating the ‘Smart’ Campus: How College Leaders Can Make The Most Of The Internet Of Things was written by Stephen G. Pelletier. The Chronicle is fully responsible for the report’s editorial content. ©2019 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced without prior written permission of The Chronicle. For permission requests, contact us at copyright@chronicle.com.

“ My advice is just try fault detection diagnostics on a single building. That’s the first step toward understanding the potential of IoT.”

©2019 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

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