How UWE Utilised Beonic’s People Counting Sensors and WiFi Data To Optimise Campus Facilities
The University of the West of England (UWE), located in Bristol, is a modern university with roots that date back to the founding of the 16th century Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers' Navigation School.
Today, UWE has more than 30,000 students, 4,000 of whom are international — hailing from 140 different countries — and over 3,000 staff. Organised across 14 departments, UWE has three campuses in and around Bristol, with additional campuses in Gloucestershire.
Recent large-scale investment in its facilities have resulted in a new Students’ Union as well as state-of-the-art learning spaces and accommodation.
The Challenge
Having previously invested in its facilities, the team at UWE wanted to gain insights into how their buildings were being utilised. Namely, they needed to know how often students and staff members were coming to use the facilities on campus, and which facilities were being used the most.
Understanding this behaviour would enable UWE to focus their investments more intelligently, and also enable them to make their campus more sustainable.
(Sustainability is an important topic for UWE; they have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030.)
The Solution
Beonic deployed Xovis 3D people counting sensors across three campus buildings (Library, Lecture Halls, and Administration Block) in order to accurately monitor occupancy and footfall.
Data is captured and correlated from several sources — including UWE’s existing Aruba WiFi access points and Xovis 3D people counting sensors — to help the university better understand occupancy and space utilisation.
By piggybacking off the existing WiFi infrastructure, Beonic tracks accurate visitor dwell time in each location. This enables UWE to determine the utilisation of their facilities as well as trends.
UWE is able to combine the people counter and WiFi data in the Beonic platform, enabling them to track and understand how their facilities are being utilised.
Testimonial
“At the University of the West of England, we wanted to better understand the new student and staff behaviour since the pandemic, to be able to better focus our resources.
With Beonic’s help, people counting sensors were installed, which was combined with our WiFi data, so that we could track the trends of staff and student behaviour in key university buildings. Thanks to their expert teams, the implementation process was smooth and quick.
We now have access to easy-to-understand dashboards and utilisation reports that can be easily shared with the relevant teams. With these dashboards, we can prioritise our resources and plan our future investments for improving facilities for University of the West of England students and staff.”
—Marcus Falla, IT Manager
The Result
The Beonic platform synthesises the people counter and WiFi data, enabling UWE to report occupancy and location data together. This integration of data provides the UWE team with a better understanding of how their main facility buildings are being utilised. In turn, this enables UWE to optimise their operational and energy efficiency, ensuring energy is not wasted by heating or cooling buildings that are not in use, and allowing the facilities team to focus their efforts on the busiest locations.
Over time, these insights provide visibility into key behavioural trends, which helps UWE make informed decisions on optimising their operational efficiency and increasing student satisfaction with their facilities.
Visit our Solutions pages to learn more about Beonic’s people counters and WiFi analytics tools, or contact our team to request a demo today.
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