Living Lab for the smart and innovative campus of the future

Education is the most important resource in our society—and it doesn’t end with graduation from high school or college. The Dieter Schwarz Foundation has created a unique, life-stage-oriented learning environment at the Bildungscampus in Heilbronn, where students from various universities and educational institutions come together.  

But how can learning, working, and living be organized on a campus that has not developed historically and is not used by only one institution? Which services add value—for students, staff, and their academic and professional success? How can sensor technology and the possibilities of digitalization be used to analyze and improve the quality of life on campus? Which services—including those related to utilities, logistics, and goods delivery—can be tested on campus and later transferred, for example, to an urban context? The goal of the Smart Campus Initiative was to use the Bildungscampus in Heilbronn as a real-world laboratory to analyze current challenges using data and to develop services for the smart and innovative campus through co-creative formats.

Those services that proved to be feasible and added value should then be transferred to various fields of application, such as urban services, logistics, or industry. Collaboration with local stakeholders—students, various educational institutions, service providers operating on campus, and regional stakeholders—played a key role in this process. The Bildungscampus Heilbronn thus becomes a collaborative testing ground for the cognitive service systems of tomorrow.

Project partner: 

Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences