Space usage monitoring
Under Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) standards, UQ must provide facilities that:
- support education and research
- suit the number and needs of students and staff
- help students achieve learning outcomes.
Our Property and Facilities Division manages UQ’s sites and spaces. Learn more on the UQ Space Planning and Management page.
Technologies we use to manage our spaces
To manage our spaces effectively, we use technologies that:
- count people in teaching and learning spaces (room level)
- analyse wi-fi data showing connectivity patterns (site/building/floor level).
How people-counting works
We use cameras in teaching and learning spaces to estimate how many people are present.
- Cameras capture images every 5 minutes from 6am to 10pm.
- Images are processed using machine learning.
- Head-counts are combined with other data (e.g. room bookings, computer and AV usage) to understand how our spaces are used.
Handling personal information
To count people accurately, images must be clear enough to identify individuals. This means they qualify as personal information. All images are stored securely in the UQ Data Lake.
How we use the images and the final data
Images are only used for people-counting and space management. They are not used for monitoring attendance.
As shown in the screenshot below, the final data for head counts doesn’t contain any personal information, but includes:
- site, building and room
- date, time and day of week
- number of people in the room
- the number of people expected (enrolment)
- activity name (e.g. tutorial code)
- device count.
