SMART CAMPUS IN VENEZUELA

Esri Venezuela recognize the role that Venezuelan universities play in our society improvement, through teaching and research. In these learning places, innovative projects are developed, aiming to better life quality and prepare leaders of the future. Though this, in recent years Esri Venezuela's Team has been advocated to promote the development of research that uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

This initiative, have reached the main university institutions in Venezuela. Providing to the most diverse academies with software and geomatics tools, as well as specialized training to students and professor staff. Which has allowed us to build the Alliance of Universities for Development (AUDES), a program that focused to promote the use of GIS as research resources in these institutions, so that their graduates, regardless of their profession, can make proficient use of spatial information to define the actions necessary to the development of Venezuela.

A palpable contribution of this alliance, has been to provide universities with cutting-edge tools that improve the way they manage their learning places. Which can be seen in fully operative and integrated solutions named Smart Campus. Scenarios that take the management of these institutions to a digital environment, where the administrative, technical and maintenance personnel have the possibility to define internal development programs, generate income and update their operating procedures.

Below, you will be able to learn about some of the main Smart Campus projects that have been developed in Venezuela, as a result of the work of dedicated students and professors with specialized knowledge in GIS.

This is a project developed by Eng. Vanessa Fernández and Eng. Maxie Carreño, when they were Geodesic Engineering students at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). Which integrates the technical knowledge they learned during their university studies and specialized training in GIS provided by the  Academia GIS of Esri Venezuela .

This project began from CAD drawings of the UCV, which were georeferenced with millimetric precision by the engineers. Then a pre-existing LIDAR point cloud of the interest area was considered as the basis to generate three-dimensional models of the main buildings and vegetation. In addition, to the generated models, were integrated buildings with detailed shapes and textures, developed by architecture students.

SIG-UCV has information regarding faculty buildings, cafeterias, libraries, green areas and Wi-Fi zones within the campuses, as well as a catalog of the artworks that can be found in it. The solutions of this project are currently administered by the professor staff of the School of Geodetic Engineering of the UCV and is completely open to the public. These allows their places to be virtually visited at any time, motivating future professionals to continue developing this system. In this moment, on the basis of the Smart Campus of the UCV, research are being carried out by future professionals, regarding the improvement of the internal services of this institution, historical-cultural walks, monitoring of plant health and more.

This is a project developed by a group of enthusiastic students of information technology, members of the Laboratory of Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling (LSIGMA-USB), in charge of Prof. Msc. Carlos Gonzalez. Which was build with tools based on Geospatial Information Technologies, to improve the management of the infrastructure and basic services of the Campus of the Simón Bolívar University (USB), through information generated by students, professors, and staff.

The project is based on the Smart City concept, where people who make life in its spaces are considered at the center of it development and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are incorporated, to stimulate the formation of efficient governments and citizen participation in planning and management processes. Under this premise, graduate from the USB will prepared to apply the knowledge acquired in urban planning and environment management, to administrate the cities of the future.

In addition to this project, as part of the alliance between USB and Esri Venezuela, both signed an agreement for educational, scientific and professional cooperation. The objective of this is to promote the use and innovative development of Geographic Information Systems. As part of this agreement 2,000 users of ArcGIS for Schools Bundle were donate to students, professors and researchers of this institution, and the university agreed to accredit the training programs of Esri de Venezuela.

This alliance "will allow us to pursue new objectives, such as turning USB into a national and international reference center for education and research in Geographic Information Technologies, focused on achieving sustainable development. There is still a lot of work to do"Prof. Msc. Carlos González.

This project was developed by Agrim. Andrés Villegas and Agrim. Carlos Méndez, which allowed to have an updated and highly accurate digital cartographic base of the Campus of the University of Zulia (LUZ). It is extremely important to know the precise area considered by the university has for its control and possible constructions, in addition to precise coordinates of the facilities within the university campus (faculties, schools, administrative buildings, among others) to build interactive maps that permit to direct or manage the Maracaibo nucleus of the University of Zulia.

The map created in this project has 22 previously digitized layers of the LUZ Campus, in which users can interact, obtain information from the different faculties, administrative buildings, and even observe images to have a detailed reference of each building. In this map, people can even explore attributes such as the constructed area, which includes the land of said campus, the demographic impact and more interesting information.

The objective of this project is to create a mobile app so that students can report incidents within the campus to the authorities, using Survey123 for ArcGIS.

The entire digitization process will be carried out in each faculty, making an inventory of all assets (classrooms, offices, areas of interest), to use the ArcGIS Indoors.

This project, currently under development, aims to build and inventory updated of the geographic information of the Metropolitan University of Caracas (UNIMET) through a database management system (SGBD) based on a web environment, which is being carried out by an interdisciplinary team, headed by Prof. Eng. Manuel Zerpa at UNIMET's Department of Construction and Sustainable Development.

During this project, Esri Venezuela's Education and Professional Services teams have provided direct support and advice. Starting with an aerial photographic survey of the UNIMET Campus, through the use of drones, being the first implementation in Venezuela of ArcGIS Site Scan. It is estimated that this project will be completed by the end of 2021, incorporating BIM technologies and real-time management and monitoring applications into the university's management system.

"The cartographic update of the UNIMET, using modern cartographic techniques, will allow handling a large volume of data and new ways of interpreting various phenomena of interest to the Community (mobility, energy consumption, water consumption, land use, management solid waste, among many). In addition, the technological tools used conceive geographic information by 'layers' promoting collaborative work, simultaneously and in real time"Prof. Ing. Manuel Zerpa.

Some actions have been taken with other notorious national universities regarding to this alliance, as: Universidad de Los Andes (ULA), Universidad de Oriente (UDO), Universidad José Gregorio Hernández (UJGH), Universidad Nacional Experimental de los Llanos Occidentales Ezequiel Zamora (UNELLEZ), among others. In which Smart Campus projects are plan to be done in the years to come.

The main objective of Esri Venezuela is continue to create new alliances with Venezuelan universities. This type of project allows students to develop soft skills that facilitate their job performance once they complete the academic process. Preparing young professionals capable of making effective decisions based on geographic intelligence.

To learn more about the Alliance of Universities for Development (AUDES), you can watch now the following forum.

CREDITS AND REFERENCES

• SIG-UCV | Geodetic Engineering of the UCV
•  Smart USB Campus | LSIGMA-USB 
• Smart Campus UNIMET | FUNDAMET