Green smart campus monitoring and detection using LoRa

Abstract

Along with the rapid development of sensing systems and wireless transmission technology, the scope of application of the IoT has substantially increased, and research and innovation that integrate artificial intelligence. This study integrated civil engineering and electrical engineering to establish a universal and modularized long-term sensing system. Aiming at positive construction in civil engineering, the campus of National Taipei University of Technology was used as the experimental site as a green campus. This paper focused on the cooling effect of the green roof and the temperature difference of the solar panel to effectively isolate the direct sunlight on the roof of the building. To achieve long-term monitoring, energy consumption must be minimized. Considering that the distance between sensor nodes in the experimental site was over dozens of feet, LoRa transmission technology was selected for data transmission. LoRa only consumes a small amount of energy during data transmission, and it can freely switch between work modes, achieving optimal power utilization efficiency. The greening-related research results indicated that the shade from solar panels on the rooftop could effectively reduce the temperature increase caused by direct sunlight on concrete surfaces. The temperature reduction effect was positively correlated with whether the solar panels provided shade. After 1 week of monitoring, we observed that having plants on the rooftop for greening negatively correlated with temperature reduction efficiency. Permeable pavement on the ground was positively correlated with temperature reduction efficiency. However, its temperature reduction efficiency was inferior to that of solar panel shading. The temperature difference between high-rise buildings and the ground was approximately 1–2 °C. At the same elevation, the temperature difference between buildings with and without greening was approximately 0.8 °C. Regarding the sensing system designed for this site, both hardware and software could be flexibly set according to the research purposes, precision requirements of the sites, and the measurement scope, thereby enabling their application in more fields.