# A Methodological Approach for the Smartification of a University Campus: The Smart ESI Use Case
###### Abstract
In order to alleviate this issue, the EU has promoted policies over the last 50 years [5] that have progressively converged into the concept of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB), which denotes buildings with a very high level of energy performance and that requires nearly zero or very low amounts of energy that can be covered, to a large extent, by energy from renewable sources. To approach the concept of NEZB, IoT and IA enable the transformation of the existing buildings into smart buildings. [PERSON] et al. review in [6] more than 20 research articles that propose strategies for energy savings in smart buildings through the automation and optimization of, for instance, the lighting, the HVAC (Heat and Ventilation Air Conditioning), fire prevention and air quality systems. Such systems are typically composed of devices that integrate multiple sensors and actuators, e.g., PIR, temperature, humidity, CO\({}_{2}\), PMs (particulate matter), LEDs, and solenoid valves, and that implement user services based on AI techniques such as, for example, neural networks, agents or fuzzy logic to determine which are the user behaviors that, subject to environmental conditions and facility state parameters, incur superfluous energy consumption and how to adjust the system configuration accordingly to optimize its consumption while user safety and its comfortability are kept. For example, the simple observation of the occupation of the spaces and the user tracking may determine when the lights should be on and off in a room [2,7]. The previous examples provide samples of smartification processes by describing the digital refinement of an existing product by embedding digital technologies and smart services [8]. Although such works provide good demonstrations of smart initiatives, they overlook or, at least, do not address the question \"how smart is that smart product/domain\", whose response provides an estimation of the degree of smartification, i.e., the quantity and quality of ICT resources employed, and how it impacts on a given domain. We rely on such assessment tools that can be built on a methodological foundation that allows for systematic replication of best practices in different domains. Precisely, based on this research hypothesis, we propose in this paper a methodology for evaluating the smartification process of small/medium-sized universities and campuses that will (1) simplify the time and effort of measuring the degree of smartification; (2) take advantage of lessons learned and best practices; and (3) provide a standardized tool for equitable comparison between smart universities based on technological and academic criteria. To the best of our knowledge, there is no other research work that investigates smart universities from this perspective. To this aim, Section 2 reviews the related works in methodologies for smartification and analyzes its suitability to the university domain. In Section 3, we describe the proposed methodology, the quantification method, dimensions and indicators. Section 4 presents the results of applying our methodology to the Smart ESI use case and Section 5 presents the discussion of the major outcomes of this analysis. Finally, Section 6 outlines the conclusions and directions for further research.