Optimizing Smart Campus Solutions: An Evidential Reasoning Decision Support Tool

Abstract

Smart technologies have become increasingly prevalent in various industries due to their potential for energy cost reduction, productivity gains, and sustainability. Smart campuses, which are educational institutions that implement smart technologies, have emerged as a specific application of these technologies. However, implementing available smart technologies is often not feasible due to various limitations, such as funding and cultural restrictions. In response, this study develops a mathematical decision-making tool based on the evidential reasoning (ER) approach and implemented in Python. The tool aims to assist universities in prioritizing smart campus solutions tailored to their specific needs. The research combines a comprehensive literature review with insights from stakeholder surveys to identify six principal objectives and four foundational technologies underpinning smart campus solutions. Additionally, six critical success factors and nine functional clusters of smart campus solutions are pinpointed, and evaluated through the ER approach. The developed decision-support tool underwent validation through various statistical tests and was found to be highly reliable, making it a generalized tool for worldwide use with different alternatives and attributes. The proposed tool provides universities with rankings and utilities to determine necessary smart applications based on inputs such as implementation cost, operation cost, maintenance cost, implementation duration, resource availability, and stakeholders’ perceived benefit.