On November 20, NCKU and Qisda Corporation signed a Smart Campus Collaboration Memorandum in agreement to combine each other’s advantages and energy to integrate teaching, research, and living infrastructure management via technologies such as the internet, cloud services, and big data analysis. They aim to incorporate these b asics into the design and operation model of smart cities in the future and expand them to neighboring businesses and communities so as to co-create and experience smart living and build a miniature smart city as an innovative and empirical demonstration.

The signing ceremony of the memorandum was hosted by the Global Research & Industry Alliance,NCKU (GLORIA NCKU) at the old library on NCKU’s Sheng-Li Campus, and NCKU president Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su and Qisda chairman and CEO Peter Chen were the signatory representatives. In her speech, Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su indicated that they at NCKU should do what changes society and the future and imagine what future society, new lifestyles, and industry opportunities should be like. She stated that their objective is to develop a smart campus starting from energy and healthcare. NCKU has been progressing steadily for the past eighty to ninety years, and smart campuses and cities are the new trend. NCKU must become a base of innovation for smart cities and make efforts and breakthroughs for the land and city they reside in. Qisda chairman and CEO Peter Chen explained that beginning with the hardware and software, Qisda has been developing the brain for a smart campus using artificial intelligence and the internet of things to realize a future smart university city. They also hope to share their smart university city experience with Tainan City to create a smart city and enrich future life.

An international research institute proposed the core elements of a smart campus include smart learning, smart social communities, smart governance, smart healthcare, smart management, and smart green energy . Through academia-industry collaboration, NCKU and Qisda will integrate campus energy conservation facilities, environment monitoring, course arrangement, personnel safety, and teacher and student health. Qisda will assist NCKU in incorporating artificial intelligence and the internet of things to integrate and activate their central management platform, effectively connect and apply on- and off-campus resources and systems, and create a smart city with the aspects of future life. NCKU is a hall of innovation for knowledge transfer and research. Artificial intelligence and the internet of things can facilitate the collection and analysis of big data for campus innovation and research and help turn this smart university city into a miniature demonstration for smart cities.

In recent years, many research teams at NCKU have invested in smart campus installation and relevant research. For example, Professor Tzu-Ping Lin of the Department of Architecture has been setting up a smart sensor network to measure temperature, humidity, and air quality indexes such as PM2.5 and carbon dioxide concentration throughout the campus and provide the information in real-time so as to establish a campus climate map with air-quality monitoring. In the Department of Urban Planning, Professor Wei-Ju Huang has designed CK-Forum, an online teaching platform that uses a cloud collaboration platform to achieve teaching innovation. In addition to strong interactivity and instant communication, it can digitally record and preserve discussion processes across time and space. The ESCO system developed by the energy system management team at the Department of Electrical Engineering uses a reservation function to remotely control energy use and also has a facial recognition function for convenient and secure access control, which achieves energy conservation management and space intelligentization . NCKU is also the first university to have a campus bike network, CK-Bike, w hich is also a motion detection vehicle. The bikes have embedded chips that collect data for better traffic safety on campus.

Qisda Corporation (originally Continental Systems Inc.) was established in 1984. Headquartered in Taoyuan, Qisda is a multidisciplinary and omnidirectional ODM/OEM service provider that offers electronic products for consumer, commercial, industrial, and medical applications. In recent years, Qisda has been actively developing smart solutions for big data integration and cloud computing technologies.