# The Campus as a Smart City: University of Malaga Environmental, Learning, and Research Approaches
## 1 Introduction  
The concept of \"Smart-City\" appeared as the application of an automatic collection of environmental data and its processing to achieve efficient management of the urban areas, as well as their resources and assets [1]. This approach is supported by the massive application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm [2], where a vast number of distributed devices are connected in order to transfer their gathered data. The Smart-City reliance on connectivity points out the importance of telecommunication technologies, as they are just as relevant as the involved sensing and processing activities. Multiple cities around the world have embraced the Smart-City concept to improve the quality of life and well-being of its citizens, as well as to increase their energy-efficiency, better their governance,and reduce their emissions [3; 4; 5]. University campuses represent an invaluable opportunity to potentiate this approach, as they concentrate a large community of students, professors, and employees, forming a \"population\" that is willing to adopt and promote innovations as well as get involved as developers and testers. By applying the Smart-City approach to a university area, the resulting \"Smart-Campus\" can grow with support by its community and it can also provide huge advantages. Campuses are their own \"small cities\", where achievable improvements to its management, governance, sustainability, and learning activities are enormous in terms of energy and water efficiency, emissions, mobility, health and well-being, nature, and teaching. In terms of applying the Smart-Campus concept to learning activities, different studies focus on the implementation of high-level smart capabilities that could improve education. For example, the work in [6] presents a brief description of the design of an IoT based Smart-Campus scheme focused on smart parking, smart room, and smart education. An integrated platform for this service is summarily presented, where Wi-Fi is used to connect the different sensors and cameras associated with the platform. However, the envisaged learning-related applications aim mainly at remote learning (e.g., by video streaming). [PERSON] et al. [7] identify a set of opportunities for incorporating the smart concept to campuses, particularly regarding parking, security, classroom support, and education. In the latter study, the main points identified are also associated with the classroom itself or the online access to learning material. Other works aim for the smart analysis of and/or support of teaching activities, such as following game-based approaches [8], supporting multimedia conferences [9], students' health [10], and smartphone applications [11]. More aligned with classical Smart-City applications, different smart approaches (applying IoT and data processing) have been defined for different objectives. In this field, [PERSON] et al. [12] present a university campus IoT platform for environmental and people flows monitoring. In terms of smart mobility, [PERSON] et al. [13] develops a mobility prediction mechanism, implementing it on the University of Malaga campus. The work in [14] focuses instead on IoT supported disaster management for smart campuses. In this context, the University of Malaga (UMA) follows a wide-scope approach to the Smart-City paradigm performed by the development of the UMA Smart-Campus initiative (SmartUMA) [15]. Among its strategic objectives are to provide full support to the management of the environment, to the learning activities of the students, and to the research and innovation of their academic personnel. Firstly, the present paper focuses on the description, as a relevant Smart-Campus example case, of the characteristics, elements, solutions, and key features of SmartUMA. Secondly, it assesses the impact and level of involvement of the campus community in the different research and learning activities, providing recommendations for other universities and infrastructure approaches.