Urban spring smart Hub

What is the project?

Urban Spring Smart Hub will be plugged into 50 standard mechanical drinking water dispensers to read water consumption & operational data in order to enable efficient drinking water facility management and to demystify water quality to the HKUST community. Through connecting to a cloud database with NB-IoT connectivity, critical information such as water leakage, and filter capacity are collected for management purposes. With public dashboard display and individual bottle-tracking, users will see their collective and personal environmental footprints regarding single-use plastic bottles and water consumption. It aims to cultivate the Bring Your Own Bottle (BYOB) behavior through multi-level data visualization and innovative user interaction.

What is the problem this project is trying to address?

Currently, HKUST’s water dispenser management is manual and costly. Although HKUST closely monitors drinking water quality with water testing and frequent filter changes, much of our campus managers’ effort is not communicated through to users, resulting in a lack of trust in water quality. Moreover, plastic pollution awareness campaigns could have a short-term effect on the behavioral change of BYOB. This project targets to improve operational efficiency and long-term community engagement.

How does this project support our sustainable smart campus as a living lab vision?

By digitizing dispenser management, it provides a smart approach to managing water resources on campus, enabling data-driven facility upgrade and expansion in the future. Plastic and filter wastes could be reduced through dispenser usage maximization and education. The project takes an agile and experimental approach to test the effectiveness of public and personalized data analytics, and reward systems to encourage long-term sustainable habits within the HKUST community. Besides, the team brings passionate students along the solution-building journey through hands-on Sustainability x Tech workshops on environmental awareness and resource management, integrating real-life experiments and education.

What's next?

Extensions can be installed to other fluid-related resource management such as greywater, shower water, etc. Collaboration with USThing app with an individualized water analytics feature that involves incentive and environmental footprint point system.