AICTE in association with TERRE Policy Centre and International Institute of Waste Management have announced 'Clean and Smart Campus' Award for the educational institutes that is based on the Environment and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The objective of the award is to raise awareness of the students, faculty and institution towards the environmental sustainability issues, the potential of the digital technologies for the sustainable living and mainstreaming United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in our education systems. A small brief on SDG is also attached as Appendix B. Some of these issues including SDGs are not an end but are great engines of future growth with lateral avenues of economic and shared development in the country. New age digital technology if applied and practiced in the right direction can act as driver to the employment generation through inclusivity rather than seeking distinctiveness in isolation. In short, the award aims to incentivize and foresee the need to make human resource aware (and be ready!) of sustainable future and to embrace the smart city eco- system being created and be an effective contributor to SDGs so that ' no one is left behind'.
The large spread and varied nature of our country offer various challenges and immense opportunities to develop solutions by innovative use of technology that can render the campus of an institute to be clean and smart. The ingenuity lies in following the basic principles of Swachta while leveraging the 'smartness through the network' for achieving higher grades of efficiency in entire spectrum. The principle of 'learning by doing' would be the most effective education mechanism for the stake holders in such transformation. The efforts of the students, faculty and administrators of an institute may well turn out to be a game changer for other institutes through the networking model envisaged in the Smart Campus Cloud Network (SCCN). Instituting an award on 'Clean & Smart Campus' is, therefore, a unique initiative in the country to coalesce the efforts of the stake holders and incentivise the youth who are working towards the above objectives. The awards intends to cover the following aspects:-
- Clean Campus. This aspect will emphasize on three areas:
(i) Cleanliness in and around the campus and waste minimization
(ii) Environment-friendly activities adopted and practiced by the campus.
(iii) Greenery within the campus to provide pollution free air and carbon-sink. - Smart Campus. This will emphasize on the following aspects:
(i) Impact of deployment of digital technology in order for the students, faculty and management in the campus to reduce consumption of natural resources (such as paper, gas, energy etc.).
(ii) Alignment of the latest digital trends like IoT, Big Data and Cloud Networking to achieve various aspects of sustainability in the campus, specifically to contribute to United Nations SDGs.
(iii) Create an ecosystem to 'smartly' connect and share the information with each other at campus, institute and national level. Any international level connect will provide a distinct advantage. The smart connect, though the cloud networking, so established should address concerns of environmental challenges including contribution to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Click here to read more:
https://www.aicte-india.org/sites/default/files/Clean_Campus_2019.pdf