Smart Campus UP

The group YMUP took the initiative to implement the Intelligent University project: The group was willing to carry out a project that would benefit to its university community, where it will display information on all the facilities found within the campus University of Panama.

How did the Project come about?

The Smart Campus project arises from the need to find a way to make our university more friendly from the point of view of guiding the location of its infrastructures, maintenance, and making administrative processes more efficient and facilitating tasks of maintenance.

The Smart Campus Project of the University of Panama also offers the opportunity for the integration of multiple sub-projects carried out by various actors, which feed the database of the macro project. Among these projects are: conducting tree inventories, location, georeferencing and data collection on the monuments and sculptures found on campus; create friendly environments for people with limited capacity; digitization of the central campus of all buildings in 3D as well as in the regional centers and extensions where the University of Panama has a presence.

Methodology

In carrying out this project, the following aspects were taken into consideration:

1. Several models of smart university projects that have been implemented were consulted, especially in developed countries.
2. Cooperation alliances were made with companies that could make donations to the Young Mappers Panama chapter and / or to the university, either in technical improvement seminars for the students participating in the project, obtaining satellite photographs of the university area and at the level of the street and photographs taken with a drone.
3. A detailed survey of all areas of the university was carried out on the central campus and on the Harmodio Arias Madrid campus.
4. Preparation of campus maps.

Project Phases

I Phase:
- Training of the students who carry out the project
- Creation of a data template in an application called Survey 123
- Field work to collect information on the infrastructures and georeference them.

Phase II:
- Preparation of a digital map using geodetic points.

Phase III:
- Survey of the Campus buildings in 3D
- Creation of web applications for use by the general public.

IV. Phase
- Creation of a database portal for the University of Panama.

V. Phase
- Preparation of the final document and delivery of the project to the authorities of the University of Panama.

Project Benefits

• Obtaining the development of an application that will have a Map in 3 Dimensions. Said application must show some buildings and structures of the University of Panama in 3D, not only from the outside, but also to include the Indoors Method, where the map must navigate and show the optimal routes inside and outside the buildings.

• The application has two versions, one for use by all the public and another for internal use of the university, which will serve for administrative activity. All the hydrants, meeting points, lighting fixtures have been georeferenced and located and even, with the collaboration of the Faculty of Exact Sciences and Technologies, an inventory of all the trees on the Octavio Méndez Pereira campus, with their phytosanitary status, species, height, width of the tree and all georeferenced with great precision.

• We hope that this project can be replicated both in regional centers, extensions of the University of Panama, as well as in other universities inside and outside the country.

Project Collaborators

The project involves the participation of other faculties within the University of Panama such as the Faculty of Natural and Exact Sciences and the Faculty of Architecture, the Faculty of Humanities with the support of the students of Ecological Geographical Tourism, Geography and History and Cartography and the Faculty of Law with the participation of one of its students who is conducting an inventory of the campus monuments.

To carry out this project, cooperative relationships have been established with private organizations such as Digital Globe, who made a donation of satellite images to the Panama Young Mappers Chapter of the University of Panama; The Esri Company who has trained the students and teachers of this chapter in programs such as ArcGis Online and others; the Panama Canal Authority, who in February of this year contributed to the project, taking aerial photography with a drone; and the Tommy Guardia National Geographic Institute, who provided the geodetic points so that the precision error was minimal using orthophotos.