In the large flow and mobility project Lund Open Sensing City (LOSC) the ambition was to try the connection of different systems of sensors for flow measurements but also to create data on flows to use as a basis for both well-informed decisions and research. On Ingvar Kamprad Design Center Sony system installed Nimway partly as the office system it is, and partly as a platform and test bed for various research projects at IKDC.

Nimway is a system that makes it easy to find available rooms, vacant desks and colleagues in a building. This is based, among other things, on the indoor positioning of mobile phones (which are used anonymously) as well as various sensors, for example to measure whether and how a room is used, air quality and heat. The first external customer was Astra Zeneca in Gothenburg, and now the system is used by both large and small companies in 35 countries. Customers include many larger companies, but it is also sold as a customized solution for smaller organizations.

The office system is used at IKDC to facilitate navigation in buildings through overview screens so that, for example, it is easier to find meeting rooms or vacancies. In the buildings, sensors are installed in various surfaces focusing on classrooms and offices but also in resources used by students outside of scheduled school hours, such as computer classrooms. An indoor positioning system in the house makes it clear to the user where he himself is and whether a room is occupied or empty.

One idea was that the project could investigate how people move and how information about premises can affect flows, but there was also an opportunity for creative students to connect different sensors to create new solutions and to create data on the use of the building. However, in the first 18 months of the project, there was pandemic and there were few students on site on the premises.

- It was a difficult start, but now we have almost a year of data from when the building has been used as it was conceived and designed for, says Fredrik Karlsson at Nimway. Thus, there is a historical data environment to draw from and an opportunity to combine with real-time data. We will not pick down the equipment even if the project itself is now over, but the students who are interested can use the system to do projects or build their research on. (Contact Fredrik Karlsson at Nimway Fredrik.Karlsson (at) sony.com or Fredrik Nilsson at IKDC fredrik.nilsson (at) plog.lth.se)

Thus, the equipment will remain in place even after LOSC is terminated.

- Within our digital projects, we have the ambition to continue building on our IoT testbed, says project manager Anders Trana at Future by Lund. Therefore, it is important that equipment and data from the work at IKDC remain even after the end of the project, so that we can also benefit from it in the future for research and testing.

For Nimway and Sony, the pandemic also became a period that gave an additional dimension to the system as it can be used to provide data on how many colleagues are or will be on site in the office.

- A realization during the pandemic was that you can use the building quite a lot without people having to be close to each other, says Fredrik Karlsson. You can intelligently control where people are allowed to work and how they work. Another lesson for us is that employees can work a little anywhere, the important thing is that the support for how they work is strong.

During the pandemic, Nimway has evolved.

- Nimway has gone from being an office system to being a system that helps us be efficient at work wherever we are, but with a focus on the office. It can visualize where you will work and where you can interact with colleagues. You can choose to come to the office when you are going to work with others, and it is good to be able to choose which days it is relevant to be on site.

Nimway can also provide business decision-makers with information on how the office is actually used and thus be a support for how to design the office of the future.

- We are seeing a globally strong movement from large office complexes to smaller and more dynamic spaces, says Fredrik Karlsson. The system allows you to see what resources in the office are being used. For example, we saw in our data when the pandemic calmed down a trend of meeting rooms running out while desk seats were empty as people mostly came to the office to collaborate. We see that we can support how companies can design and mix resources and we can help so that you do that through data-driven decisions and see what works in the organizations and change as you go.

Nimway has also been adapted so that it can be more easily integrated with ventilation and lighting systems, for example so that the system reminds you to turn off when people go home. There is also the possibility of, for example, air quality sensors to make it clear when the air gets bad in meeting rooms.

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Project Lund Open Sensing City (LOSC) was completed in December 2023 and funded by Vinnova. In LOSC participated Axis Communications, AFRY, Kraftringen, Lund Municipality, Lund University, Mobile Heights, Sensative, Sony, Telia, Smart Villages and Trivector.

The LOSC project is done in close cooperation with the project FLOW which will end in December 2024 and was funded by IoT Sweden. Enrolled project partners were Lund Municipality, Mobile Heights, Axis Communications, Sensative, MiThings, Smart Villages and Acconeer.

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