Phase four of space planning

By Sara Walsh

We are proud that the School of Public Health is piloting an approach that may benefit the rest of campus

Last summer, you may recall, we began phase three of space planning to better serve our students, faculty and staff. The work so far has focused on bringing teams, such as our departments and centers, closer together, standardizing space assignments, and developing more student-centric spaces.

Now, as we enter the fourth phase, the University is embarking on a usage study with the help of the data-informed space planning platform Lambent Spaces. This platform will allow us to have objective data, which, when paired with your important feedback, will help the school as we continue to design, allocate, and manage spaces for our community.

The message below is a copy of the Provost’s announcement about the usage study that appeared in Today@Brown. We are proud that SPH is piloting an approach that may benefit the rest of campus, and we wanted you to have a look at Provost Doyle’s campus-wide message.

If you have any questions about the study, please email sph-operations@brown.edu.

Sincerely,

Walsh signature

Sara Walsh
Executive Dean of Finance and Administration

Message from Provost Doyle

Today@Brown Date: September 10
Sender: Provost Doyle
University Piloting Space Usage Study at SPH

Across our University campus, we are committed to offering physical spaces that meet the needs of our community and the work we do every day. We aspire to provide spaces that are useful and efficient while also being welcoming, comfortable and safe. As such, we are always seeking insights into how we can better use, design and deliver spaces that most effectively serve our students, faculty and staff. This is particularly needed as the use of space has evolved following the pandemic, along with improved technology for hybrid work and study.

This fall, the University is engaging the services of the space-planning firm Lambent. Their Lambent Spaces technology leverages anonymized data from our wireless networks to correlate it to space utilization and inform our long-term planning. Lambent has partnered with several peer institutions on similar projects. University Facilities and the Office of Information Technology have approved a pilot of this project at the School of Public Health (SPH) in support of its continued growth.

Lambent will analyze a limited subset of the data we currently collect through our wireless access points and illustrate the volume and frequency of that activity to estimate when spaces are being used and by how many people. SPH hopes to learn how the different classrooms, meeting spaces and workstation zones are being utilized to better plan for an environment that creates welcoming spaces for work and collaboration, supporting academic and research growth goals.

The scope of this initial study will be SPH’s spaces at 121 & 155 South Main Street for the duration of this academic year.

Individual privacy is paramount in this project. Lambent’s access is restricted to a fully-anonymized subset of Brown’s existing wireless network data, excluding any information about the device type or device owner. In accordance with Brown’s Privacy Policy, no personally identifiable information will be shared with Lambent. We are excited to be able to take advantage of innovations in technology in ways that respect the privacy of our community while also supporting our goals to improve the spaces we provide to our students, faculty and staff.

Questions about this study can be sent to provost@brown.edu.

Sincerely,

Francis J. Doyle III
Provost