Atea bringing Internet of Things to schools!
One of Ateas new offerings is around Internet of Things (IoT) and a solution called Smart City Schools – where we monitor school environments and present the results instantly to the school administrations and municipalities using Microsoft PowerBI. To make this solution possible and create a very good visibility in the school environment we use a complete backend with sensors, gateways and Azure services. You must be thinking – “Is this the future?!” Yes, it is, but hold on – the next step is to connect this environment data to student grades, attendance and other metrics to see how an optimized smart school can be created.
Smart City Schools – a solution of the future!
A schools environment includes the levels of carbon dioxide, temperature, sounds, moisture, lighting and other metrics in each of the classrooms and other facilities and all of it affects students and their ability to learn and develop. The main idea of the solution is that by continuously measuring all of the metrics of a schools environment and combining this with algorithms that can identify patters we can create a precise image of the schools environment. By measuring the different parameters in the classrooms and comparing the data with the desired result we can help the schools administration and accountable municipality to optimize the resources and by analyzing face recognition data also improve the schools security.
The main target we strive to achieve with the Smart City School solution is a more stable school environment where the responsible party can monitor the classroom metrics using MS Power BI and react accordingly. For the future we see that the solution is connected with data on student performance and productivity and has the capability to cross measure the different data.
The biggest benefits we see for the schools using the solution is:
- Lower heating costs;
- Better utilization of facilities;
- And much more!
How do we do it?
To bring the IoT solution to life our team used different presence sensors that can measure the air quality through monitoring levels of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds, as well as temperate, humidity, barometric pressure, sound and light levels and on top of all that – facial recognition.
The solution communicates via the existing wireless and/or wire networks and Microsoft Azure solutions are used to manage data and remotely configure connected devices. For viewing and acting on real-time data Microsoft Power BI is the tool of choice.
More than just an idea!
Smart City Schools is not just an idea it’s a solution that we have already piloted in the municipality of Enkoping Sweden. And it is a great pilot project to support Enkopings municipality’s vision of becoming a more sustainable and “smart municipality” thus making life easier for its residents, entrepreneurs and visitors. The first step in the project – to monitor the school environment in 5 classrooms for a limited time period. The next step (and opportunity) is to monitor all of the schools and classrooms within the municipality – around 1000 classrooms and related facilities.
“We face many challenges in our operations and we need to find smarter solutions to these. You can not believe you can only run faster, we have to do things differently, IoT is part of it. Looking forward to finding together several exciting solutions together,” says Helena Proos (S), chairman of the municipality of Enköping.
During this pilot the municipality saw that the chosen school, among a few challenges, was undergoing several positive changes. The solution helped the school to manage their classrooms better – new heaters were purchased for a room with constantly low temperature and in a classroom with very low levels of CO2 a new fan was installed. Another benefit was that the schools administration could evaluate the occupancy of all the rooms, that helped them to optimize the lesson plan.
The future!
– The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of Ata’s strategic focus areas, aiming to help our customers benefit from new digital ecosystems to make them more effective. I am very positive about our cooperation with Enköping Municipality as they have a clear goal to create a smarter society and we look forward to achieving that goal with them,” says Carl-Johan Hultenheim, CEO of Atea Sweden.
The Smart City School solution may seem as future is already here for some but for us there is so much space to grow with it. The sky is the limit!
– Daniel Ehnhage, Chief Business Intelligence IoT, Atea SE