Enabling smart campus indoor spaces through spatial modeling with the IMDF Platform

Smart campus is developed to deliver intelligent, user-centric services by leveraging IoT and big data to optimize the management of resources, spaces, and campus-wide activities. Its architecture relies on three core technological pillars: (1) Internet of Things (IoT) for collecting real-time data from the physical environment, (2) cloud computing for processing and storing both spatial and non-spatial data at scale, and (3) intelligent analytics that apply machine learning and data mining for automated decision-making and anomaly detection. Among these, spatial data, especially indoor spatial data, plays a vital role in enabling services such as indoor navigation, resource allocation, and environmental monitoring. However, the lack of standardization and poor interoperability with IoT systems remain key barriers to the effective use of indoor spatial data. To overcome this, this paper proposes a unified approach that leverages the Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) as part of the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) for smart campuses. By integrating IMDF with the OGC SensorThings API, referred to as the digital nervous system (DNS) in a smart campus architecture, the approach helps build a flexible, real-time responsive indoor mapping system. This solution aims to standardize and optimize the connection between IoT data and indoor maps, thereby improving user experience and operational efficiency of smart campuses.