Smart Campus Facens: First Sandbox of Smart and Sustainable City in Brazil

Smart Campus Facens uses the university campus as a real-world testing ground for smart and sustainable city solutions. Since 2014, the campus has functioned as a living lab where students, researchers, and partners can design, test, and deploy technologies under real conditions, with the goal of translating those solutions to cities beyond the university. The initiative brings together energy, water, waste, food, and data systems into a single, integrated environment. The campus runs entirely on renewable energy, generates part of its own power through solar panels, and has eliminated most single-use plastics. Water and waste flows are monitored and managed through IoT systems, enabling full on-site treatment, high recycling rates, and zero organic waste sent to landfill. By combining hands-on experimentation with measurable results, Smart Campus Facens shows how technology, when applied at the right scale, can support concrete progress toward smarter and more sustainable urban systems.