Building the next generation of smart campuses: Energy, operations, and video intelligence in education

December 11, 2025

 

Educational institutions today face a unique combination of operational pressures. Campuses are growing more complex to manage, students and faculty expect safer and more responsive environments, and administrators are under increasing pressure to reduce energy consumption and meet sustainability targets. As these needs expand, campuses must look for tools that provide better visibility, faster decision making, and long-term resiliency.

Akila supports this transformation by bringing campus operations, energy management, maintenance, and video intelligence together into a single, unified platform. For schools, universities, and research facilities, this creates a clearer, more actionable understanding of how their campuses are performing in real time.

 

Modern challenges across campus operations

Most educational environments face a similar set of hurdles. Large campuses often rely on aging or inconsistent infrastructure, with HVAC, utilities, and equipment spread across many different building types. Energy consumption is high, especially in spaces such as labs, dormitories, and lecture halls. Maintenance teams struggle with limited visibility and reactive workflows. On top of this, institutions need faster ways to understand what’s happening across campus – whether an incident needs review, a crowded area needs attention, or a room’s usage patterns suggest a better scheduling or energy strategy.

These challenges create inefficiencies that impact sustainability, campus experience, operational continuity, and planning.

 

A unified digital foundation for smarter campuses

Akila addresses these challenges through a holistic approach that connects building systems, equipment data, IoT devices, and video sources into a single platform. This gives administrators, facility teams, and safety staff a shared operational picture of the entire campus.

Optimized energy and HVAC performance

AI-driven analytics help institutions better understand how their buildings consume energy, alert teams to anomalies, and automatically adjust HVAC systems according to occupancy and usage patterns. Whether for classrooms, research spaces, or residential buildings, Akila delivers more efficient performance while still maintaining comfort and reliability. Clear energy baselining and carbon tracking also help institutions align to sustainability commitments and regulatory requirements.

Predictive maintenance and digital twin visualization

A campus-scale digital twin brings every asset and building into a clear 3D view, allowing teams to quickly locate equipment, understand system relationships, and respond faster. Condition-based maintenance ensures that faults are detected early and repairs are scheduled before they disrupt classes or operations. As campuses expand, this digital foundation becomes a critical tool for planning and long-term lifecycle management.

Video analytics for faster insights

As campus environments grow more dynamic, the ability to quickly understand what happened in a specific area or timeframe becomes increasingly important.

Akila integrates Video Search and Summarization (VSS) to make video data more accessible and efficient to use. Instead of manually reviewing long footage, teams can use AI to instantly search for relevant moments or generate concise summaries around an event window or location. This supports faster incident verification, better coordination, and a clearer understanding of activity patterns across the campus.

VSS is not positioned as surveillance technology – it is an operational intelligence tool that helps education institutions gain insights quickly, improve response times, and make more informed decisions about space utilization and campus planning.

 

Creating better learning environments

When energy management, maintenance, and video intelligence operate through a unified platform, campuses experience tangible improvements.

  • Learning spaces stay more comfortable and consistent.
  • Maintenance issues are addressed proactively rather than reactively.
  • Activity patterns reveal how buildings are truly used, supporting smarter scheduling and resource allocation.
  • Campus teams gain faster access to critical information during incidents or peak activity periods.
  • Sustainability strategies align more closely with real operational data.

These outcomes directly support the core mission of education institutions: providing safe, healthy, and empowering environments for students and staff.

 

Designed to scale across diverse campus environments

Akila is designed to scale seamlessly from single buildings to multi-campus portfolios. Institutions can standardize energy reporting, maintenance workflows, and operational practices across all locations while maintaining the flexibility needed for different building types and usage patterns.

This approach provides administrators with long-term digital governance and ensures consistency even as campuses expand, renovate, or adapt to new operational demands.

 

Building the future of digital education infrastructure

The future of campus operations will rely on integrated digital systems that combine energy intelligence, predictive maintenance, real-time visualization, and rapid video-based insights. By bringing these capabilities together, Akila helps educational institutions move toward safer, more efficient, and more sustainable campuses — all while empowering teams to make better decisions every day.

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Understanding how energy moves through a building has always been one of the biggest challenges in facility and sustainability management. Data comes from everywhere including utility feeds, renewable systems, sub-meters, sensors, and BMS points,but it rarely comes together in a way that reveals the full picture. Most systems can tell you how much energy a building uses. Very few can show you where that energy comes from, how it’s distributed, and what (or who) is driving the demand.

Akila’s improved Energy Flow Analysis feature is built to change that. By turning fragmented, complex data into a complete, intuitive, and shareable map of energy from supply to final consumption, it gives organizations the clarity they need to understand performance, improve coordination, and take faster, data-backed action.

 

The problem: Energy data without structure creates blindspots

Modern buildings generate enormous volumes of information. Yet the systems designed to interpret that information often struggle with transparency.

  • Energy supply is split across grid feeds, renewables like PV systems, and sometimes backup generators or batteries.
  • Consumption is scattered across tenants, equipment categories, operating schedules, and zones.
  • Different teams create their own diagrams or spreadsheets, leading to inconsistencies and duplicated work.
  • Portfolio managers struggle to benchmark sites because each building reports energy differently.
  • Facility teams are left reacting to peaks and inefficiencies rather than preventing them.

Without a structured and intuitive way to visualize the entire energy chain, even the best teams are making decisions in the dark.

 

 

Introducing Akila’s enhanced Energy Flow Analysis

Akila’s Energy Flow Analysis creates a complete end-to-end map of where your building’s energy comes from and where it goes. Built on top of a detailed digital twin, the feature transforms raw datapoints into a cohesive energy story.

What sets Akila apart is its powerful, flexible IoT integration framework. Akila seamlessly connects to a wide variety of data sources including electricity meters, water meters, smart sockets, environmental sensors, and legacy BMS points across multiple protocols (MQTT, HTTP API, FTP, and more). This adaptability is the result of years of integrating with both local and global IoT suppliers, as well as third-party and legacy systems.

Whether your building uses locally sourced hardware or a unified global supplier, Akila’s platform ensures that every relevant datapoint is captured, structured, and made available for analysis. Our reusable integration scripts and standardized data models guarantee that energy flow insights are consistent, scalable, and reliable across diverse building portfolios and regions.

With this feature, users can:

  • Visualize the full supply-to-consumption energy journey.
  • See relationships between energy sources, equipment groups, zones, and tenants.
  • Compare real-world flows against expected patterns.
  • Spot anomalies, inefficiencies, and underperforming assets instantly.
  • Align cross-functional teams around one shared view of building performance.

Rather than jumping between multiple sources of truth, teams get a unified energy picture that is accurate, real-time, and actionable.

 

How it works

Akila begins by integrating data from every relevant source: grid import meters, onsite renewable systems like PV arrays and batteries, tenant sub-meters, equipment-level sensors, and BMS points. This raw data is then cleaned, time-aligned, and mapped into the building’s digital twin, creating a consistent, structured foundation for analysis.

Once the data is organized, Akila generates a dynamic supply-to-load energy flow diagram that visually traces how energy moves through the building – from input sources all the way to consumption by equipment and zones. This intuitive visualization makes it easy to see dependencies, identify bottlenecks, and understand the true story behind energy use.

Finally, these insights are actionable. They inform and enable predictive maintenance, optimization strategies, and reporting workflows, allowing teams to react quickly or even automate responses through Akila’s control features. The result is a unified, real-time understanding of building energy that supports smarter decisions at every level.

 

Three ways users gain immediate value

  1. Supply side intelligence – Understanding where energy comes from

For buildings using a mix of grid electricity, PV generation, and battery storage, understanding energy supply is critical.

Akila breaks down exactly how much energy is coming from each source and how those sources are being used.

This enables users to:

  • Measure real renewable self-consumption rates.
  • Identify when PV underperforms and diagnose why.
  • Shift loads away from expensive grid periods.
  • Optimize the building’s cost and emissions strategy.

The result is a clearer understanding of your energy mix and more confident decisions around purchasing, scheduling, and sustainability.

 

  1. Tenant breakdowns – Transparent and fair energy attribution

For multi-tenant buildings, energy transparency is often a pain point. Manual sub-meter reads, inconsistent billing logic, and disputes can eat resources and erode trust.

Akila solves this by breaking down energy consumption by tenant, with data mapped directly to the 3D digital twin.

This gives property managers and owners the ability to:

  • Accurately attribute consumption for billing or reporting.
  • Identify tenants with unusually high load intensity.
  • Highlight savings opportunities specific to each tenant.
  • Reduce disputes through clear, verifiable consumption records.

Improved transparency strengthens landlord-tenant relationships and supports better long-term planning.

 

 

  1. Equipment System breakdown – Benchmarking what drives demand

Not all systems contribute equally to a building’s energy load. HVAC may dominate in one building, while pumps or industrial equipment dominate in another.

Akila visualizes consumption by equipment category so users can understand which systems are responsible for which portion of total demand.

This helps teams:

  • Benchmark equipment performance against design values or peer buildings.
  • Spot equipment types with recurring inefficiencies.
  • Prioritize maintenance, upgrades, or operational tuning where it matters most.
  • Detect early signs of equipment degradation through rising energy intensity.

Instead of looking at building-wide totals, operators get detailed clarity on what’s driving energy use.

 

Why this matters for the future of smart buildings

Energy Flow Analysis closes one of the biggest gaps in building management: the lack of a unified, intuitive, and actionable understanding of how energy moves through the built environment.

With this feature, teams can:

  • Shift from reactive firefighting to predictive planning.
  • Align sustainability and operations teams around shared, trusted data.
  • Build more accurate forecasts and budgets.
  • Support audits, compliance, and ESG reporting with confidence.
  • Unlock new optimization pathways powered by AI and automation.

As buildings grow more complex and energy costs rise, this level of clarity is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s essential.

 

 

 

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Akila Partners with Thinxtra to Accelerate Smart Building Adoption Across Australia

June 25, 2025

June 23rd, Sydney – Akila, a global leader in digital twin and smart building technology, today announced a strategic partnership with Thinxtra, an Australia-based Internet of Things (IoT) solutions provider. The collaboration marks a significant step in Akila’s regional expansion and demonstrates growing demand for digital solutions that drive sustainability, efficiency, and compliance across the built environment.

This partnership combines Akila’s advanced digital twin platform which unifies energy, asset, and carbon data into a single intelligent interface, with Thinxtra’s proven expertise in deploying connected IoT infrastructure across Australia and New Zealand. Akila powers the software intelligence layer enabling real-time monitoring, AI-led optimization, and portfolio-level decision-making, while Thinxtra delivers reliable field execution through expert integration, deployment, and support services.

The partnership is currently supporting the rollout of a smart building solution for a global retail brand with multiple commercial sites across Australia. This builds on a multi-year collaboration between Akila and the brand spanning Asia, Europe, and America, covering more than 4 million square meters of building assets. In Australia, Thinxtra ensures successful local implementation through hardware integration and connectivity, while Akila leads project delivery through its digital twin and AI-driven analytics engine.

“We’re proud to partner with Akila to bring smarter, more sustainable operations to life in Australia,” said Sam Sharief, Chief Operating Officer at Thinxtra. “The real value in any smart building project lies in turning raw data into actionable information, and doing it at scale. By combining Akila’s powerful platform with our local expertise in deploying connected solutions, we’re helping organisations unlock meaningful efficiencies, reduce waste and make faster, smarter decisions.”

The current rollout focuses on enabling data-driven energy management and operational optimization in 11 commercial sites across Australia. This project will include energy monitoring, HVAC optimization, asset management, and carbon tracking, providing full visibility into building performance across the portfolio. The solution is expected to deliver 15–20% energy savings, increase operational efficiency, and support ESG compliance, creating a scalable foundation for future sustainability initiatives.

“Australia is a key market in Akila’s global expansion strategy, and Thinxtra has been an exceptional partner in turning our platform’s potential into real-world outcomes,” said Calvin Sun, Head of Asia Pacific, Akila. “Their local knowledge, professionalism, and technical execution give us confidence in scaling Akila projects throughout the region.”

Following the success of this deployment, Akila and Thinxtra plan to extend their collaboration across Australia and New Zealand, and deepen their impact within the regional facility management sector.

About Thinxtra

Thinxtra enables efficient, cost-effective, and scalable IoT solutions for asset tracking, facilities management and utilities. With extensive experience delivering complex technology projects across Australia and New Zealand, Thinxtra empowers organisations to take control of their critical infrastructure with smart, reliable solutions.

Learn more at https://thinxtra.com/

 

 

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