Smart campus development is fundamentally a response to the increasingly dynamic use of the campus and the pressure on various resources including, energy, financial, and human resources. In addition, The concept of smart campuses development as a testbed for a smart city is gaining momentum in the research community. Integrating data with advanced visualization and simulation capabilities in a digital twin is important for developing a quasi-real-time, context-aware decision-support platform for smart campus management, which can serve as a testbed for smart cities. To integrate geospatial data for smart campus dashboard, it is essential to updated reference data while maintaining the temporal changes for analysis, properly geo-reference data, automate the 3D reconstruction from the existing CAD/As-built files (data enrichment), and process data integration automatically.
This presentation will discuss the considerations, issues, and challenges of developing a 3D dashboard for visualizing and simulating campus infrastructure using ESRI technology. This project is under a multi-disciplinary research project "Smart Campus Integrated Platform Development“. Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) campus has been used as a case study area since it is centrally located in the downtown core of Toronto.
The geospatial data for the developed dashboard has been retrieved from various resources including City of Toronto, TMU facility management office and website. FME software has been utilized for the required ETL (Extracting, Transforming, Loading) process to extract features from various documents and transform them to the desired format (i.e., shapefiles).
The GIS data has been imported into the ArcGIS Pro software to overlay and reproject to the proper spatial reference system. The data then has been shared and hosted in the ArcGIS online which is Esri's web-based mapping software. ArcGIS API for JavaScript library has been utilized to develop the 3D web-based GIS dashboard.
TMU university has installed various smart sensors in all their campus buildings to monitor the utility consumption including gas, water, steam and electricity. The data is continuously streamed and stored in the cloud, and it can be retrieved through the APIs.
Shadow Analysis: The shadow analysis tool allows for studying the amount of solar access to various parts of the campus sites and buildings. It is essential to assess the impact of physical obstructions and their effect on the access to direct solar radiation for green roofs, rooftop and wall solar applications.
Access To The Smart Meter Reading: By selecting each campus building, the entire available sensors for any building are listed, and by choosing any of them, the meter readings data for any period can be accessed, visualized, and graphically analyzed.
Ground Transparency: The other feature of the dashboard is enabling/disabling the ground transparency which enable us to demonstrate the underground infrastructure from the aboveground.
3D Symbolization: The spatial features can be symbolized by different colors or 3D symbols based on their types or their attributes. The feature (i.e., sewer system) can be symbolized by the year of construction, e.g., red indicates older pipes and blue indicates newer pipes.
Underground Infrastructure Accessibility: The underground infrastructure is accessible by navigating to the underground. he attribute information of each feature is also accessible when clicking on that feature.
The developed dashboard provides the capabilities of visualizing and navigating through TMU buildings, TMUs’ assets, and campus infrastructure.
Also, the developed dashboard facilitates quasi-real-time monitoring of utility consumption across the campus buildings and potentially uncovers the patterns and trends of consumption including water, electricity, and gas.
Functionalities including shadow analysis and 3D interactive symbolization provide a better understating of the university’s assets and environment towards the development of a more sustainable and greener campus environment.
Continue improving of real-time dashboard for analysis, prediction, and visualization(different LODs for whole campus) including:
Graphing tool, interface, and 3D data improvements Realistic 3D symbolization and
Visual alerts of real-time events
Developing an open-source replica of the dashboard using Cesium in parallel.
Developing an open-source replica of the dashboard using Cesium in parallel.
