Data Driven Research and Modeling for The Sorbonne University
The Sorbonne university was established in 2006 as part of an agreement between the Sorbonne University in Paris and the Government of Abu Dhabi. Since 2009 it has operated on a state of the art and purpose-built campus on Al Reem Island in Abu Dhabi including over 93,000sq metres of teaching and recreational and accommodation facilities, including a library, a 700-seat auditorium, sports centre and cafeteria. At present there are over 2,000 graduates studying at the university representing over 90 nationalities.
EventMAP were contracted to examine the planning for provision of a new campus at the Sorbonne University, Abu Dhabi, which was to accommodate a projected future growth in student numbers. An initial space plan had been prepared by the university using normal architects space planning approaches. However, the funding body needed to ensure it had fully analysed all possible space demand within the university to provided effective, efficient and appropriate space to meet anticipated student growth projections.
An analysis of the current academic year’s timetable was produced to determine student contact hours across colleges and programmes as well as the average weekly contact hours by teaching and learning activity.
We then generated a series of reversions of the space plan based on changes to space use in operation and identified the most effective plan in terms of both meeting the operational needs of the university and producing efficiency in terms of meeting the financial budgets available to the university for construction and operation of the new campus on Al Reem island. This included the development of detailed schedule of accommodation for new campus development (e.g. the types, number and demand for each room type) and validated this schedule of accommodation through use of timetable modelling. The final space plan’s teaching spaces were then validated in our software to determine that the space was enough to meet projected timetabling needs as driven by the projected student growth.
Through producing a working timetable we were able to demonstrate that the teaching spaces provided would fully accommodate growth needs. At the end of the project we were able to demonstrate to both the university and the funding agency that the significant capital investment in the new campus would fall within the correct budget range for construction and operation, and that the proposed space plan would meet their requirements.
