A look at a latest sustainable university campus

The Eco Campus of the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) in the Digital District in Singapore is an award-winning model for sustainability and innovation. This state -of -the -art campus consolidates six satellite locations and seamlessly integrates into the industry and the community and strengthens SIT's learning approach. The campus was developed with state -of -the -art sustainable features and includes two super low energy buildings that reduce energy consumption by at least 40 %. The first multi-energy microgrid in Southeast Asia with 10,000 square meters of solar models that can improve 1,000 apartments with four rooms and a district cooling system annually, and a district cooling system that increases energy efficiency by 30 % via conventional cooling methods. In addition, a rainwater usage system contributes significantly to water protection and collects enough water every year to fill 34 Olympic swimming pools.

The campus is powered by IoT and has 20,000 sensors that feed real -time data into an integrated building management system and optimize energy consumption over the entire location. These groundbreaking sustainability initiatives have received the prestigious awards of the campus, including the BCA Green Mark Platinum Award and the Active Beautiful Clean Waters Certified (Gold), which enhances their status as a future-oriented, environmentally conscious formant hub. Through his living laboratories, the students deal with practical learning with real sustainability solutions and are at the top of applied research and environmental responsibility. Chan Wing Leong, Deputy President (Campus Development) and Chief Investment Officer of the Singapore Institute of Technology, discusses the location of the location.

Why did you choose your new campus, which was designed by Woha and RSP? Was it that they were not confident which energy goals could only reach an architectural authority?

As with any big procurement exercise, also for design, SIT was looking for suggestions from creative architects for the SIT campus. We had two locations for the construction, and this offered the opportunity to appoint two architectural companies for the design of the campus. The tender procedure provided many good suggestions for both local and foreign architects, and they were planners and engineers from Woha architects and RSP architects that have significantly gained the mandates.

Woha's concept, the library and the academic blocks to wrap an existing tropical rainforest that would be the Community Park (Campus Heart) was both sensitive and refreshing. The treatment of the administrative heart of the campus by RSP, which also includes the auditorium and the multi -purpose hall (Campus Court), reacted well to the point of the place on the water promenade. Of course, the tendering procedure also took into account the considerations for the low carbon considerations so that Sit has a very green campus, and both companies were very good at developing designs that correspond to.

Have you deliberately asked a sustainable and energy -saving campus? If so, why and do you know how to manage it?

Yes, sustainability and energy savings in design were important considerations. The campus is our commitment to recognize the vision, to achieve full sustainability in a park -like environment and at the same time to work together as a real campus for learning in addition to industry and community at Punggol. The campus has to offer students a full learning environment and experience at the university that resembles a “living laboratory” that integrates applied research and innovation for sit and its university, institutional and industrial partners. For example, we present that the campus with an intelligent sensor network must be wired in the entire environment, with the temperature, ambient light and human presence data. Such data is shared to our integrated building management system (IBMS), in which various building systems such as lighting, elevator, climate systems and safety via the devices and systems on the Internet of Things are connected to the ecosystem. SIT provides systems for artificial intelligence or data analysis to continuously monitor, analyze and control the system of the building via the IBMS platform to optimize resource efficiency. The system optimization is carried out without affecting the environment of the building, the experience of the campus and the efficiency of the work area.

How much energy and carbon can be saved? What does this project include to achieve this?

The Multi-Energy Micro-Grid (MEMG) developed as a research cooperation with the SP group and will be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. After installation, SIT has about 10,000 square meters of photovoltaic sun collectors installed on the roofs of the buildings. After reaching, the system could help save energy and remove carbon emissions, which corresponds to the removal of almost 2,000 vehicles from the streets. The MEMG scale could be expanded in the future by implementing other highly fuel -saving power generation technologies. The MEMG complements the power supply of the campus and thus reduces the general dependency on the main power network and contributes to its goal of being energy in the long term that can be obtained themselves.

Another feature of the new campus that optimizes resource efficiency is the cooling system of the district for the cooling requirements of the campus. The distribution cooling system will support the core facilities of the university, including classrooms, laboratories, manufacturer, library, multi-purpose hall, administrative offices, auditorium and food court. With the optimal construction and control of the district cooling system, electricity consumption and CO2 footprint at university level could be significantly reduced.