A new £400k project is set to transform schools, care homes, leisure centres and council offices into smart buildings across the Scottish Highlands

The project will be implemented by Highland Council and IoT provider, North.

By using Scotland’s National IoT network, IoT Scotland, along with smart sensors to collect data, the project will gain insights on council buildings including CO2 levels, temperature and humidity, ventilation, electricity consumption and light levels.

The data will be used by the council within its data analytics platform to reduce costs and carbon emissions, whilst improving the environment for young people, elderly care home residents, members of the local community, and council staff.

Serving a third of Scotland’s total land area, Highland Council is responsible for many remote buildings which can now be monitored from a centralised point across the IoT network – reducing unnecessary journeys and enabling better use of resources.

The Highland Council’s Chair of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee and Chair of the Council’s Climate Change Working Group, Trish Robertson, said: “We are delighted to be working with North on a Smart Building – Smart Cities project which has been procured with the assistance of funding from the European Rural Development Fund (ERDF).

“North have supplied us with a large number of monitoring devices which will allow us to monitor activity in our large estate, and inform decisions on how to manage our buildings in a more energy efficient way. Alongside the hardware supplied, North have also been very proactive in supplying training and technical support to our project team.”

North is delivering the project across all Highland Council buildings, with the council able to self-install pre-configured IoT sensors to monitor and gather data on building and room usage. To do this, the company has supplied its data enablement platform to help the council and its partners model building use, identify issues and deliver a more comfortable environment whilst controlling costs.

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Scottish Government Connectivity Minister Paul Wheelhouse said: “Across the Highlands, the Scottish Government funded IoT Scotland network offers a range of cost effective sensor solutions which has a massive impact on public service delivery in some of the remotest parts of Scotland.

“Through this unique partnership with Highland Council, this smart building project not only improves ongoing maintenance and helps monitor running costs. More importantly, this ensures council buildings and their services will be safe for people to use and access.

“Digital connectivity as critical national infrastructure plays a fundamental role in Scotland’s economic and social recovery post Covid-19. By expanding this digital sensor network, we continue to protect people’s health at work, home or school, especially those who are most vulnerable.

“This is a great opportunity for Highland Council to embrace future-proofed Internet of Things (IoT) and data driven technologies, and as we move towards becoming a carbon neutral nation, applications like this will help reduce our carbon footprint, paving a way for Scotland to meet its green energy low carbon ambitions. As a direct result of better connectivity, I’m delighted to see the range of lasting benefits this project will bring to the Highlands and my thanks go to all our partners in making this happen.”