Think of a university campus: it has its...

    Think of a university campus: it has its own roads, shops, residential areas, banks and transport links. It may be visited by tens of thousands of people each day. It is, in effect, a tiny city.

Across the globe, metropolises (大都市) are increasingly opting for a smart city approach. This is a tech-driven model that’s used in places such as Barcelona, where street lamps react intelligently to surroundings to save energy; Seattle, where smart traffic lights respond to the conditions on the road and even Milton Keynes, which has a real-time “data hub” sharing information about the town’s energy and water consumption, transport, weather and pollution.

Universities are taking notice. The US is leading the way, with on-campus innovations (创新) in energy (the University of Texas at Austin has a fully independent grid that provides all its energy), transport (the University of Michigan has introduced a self-driving shuttle system) and information (the University of Minnesota has installed 300 digital signage boards, updated with real-time data.)

UK institutions are following suit. The University of Glasgow has been working with innovation centre Future Cities Catapult on a strategy to bring smart technology to the campus as it expands. The vision includes intelligent campus Al, an on-demand bus service and a data centre powered by renewable energy.

“Smart cities are kind of slow-moving,” says Gemmy Ginty, a designer working on the strategy. “Cities are so big, and there are so many players and stakeholders (有权益关系者), so it can be difficult. But universities have control over their estates. They own all the buildings, all the networks and a captive audience in terms of the students, so they can become a living lab.”

Curtin University, in Western Australia, has joined up with Hitachi to turn the campus into a data-gathering laboratory, with 1,600 cameras linked to facial recognition and analytics software to gather information on study patterns and course attendance. According to the university’s chief operating officer Ian Callahan, this will be “to improve students’ experiences and enhance learning”。

“But any kind of monitoring does raise questions around privacy. Universities need to remember that data are not a magic bullet.” says Kathleen Armour, a professor at the University of Birmingham.

“I am not convinced by the suggestion that we should collect mountains of data on everything a student does,” she says. “It’s easy to be carried away. Instead, we need to use anonymous (匿名的) data intelligently to ensure that our campus and its systems are made as effective as possible to meet students needs.”

1.What do cities mentioned in Paragraph 2 have in common?

A.They all try every means to save water.

B.They all have a smart transport system.

C.They all have a smart way to fight pollution.

D.They all benefit from technological advance.

2.What can we learn from Gemmy Ginty’s words?

A.It is much easier to build smart universities.

B.Universities should give students right to choose.

C.Cities should take universities into consideration.

D.It is difficult to control universities’ development.

3.What is Kathleen Armour’s attitude towards monitoring?

A.Supportive B.Negative

C.Concerned D.Indifferent