Assessing the relative importance of sustainability indicators for smart campuses : a case of higher education institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

The appraisal of educational institution campuses’ sustainability performance has been on the rise within the past decades. This appraisal is primarily due to the importance of establishing and executing planning policies targeted at designing smart, healthy, and sustainable campuses. In ensuring environmental sustainability for smart development in Nigeria tertiary institution campuses, allocating relative importance and weights to selected indicators was carried out via the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The relevant indicators peculiar to Nigeria's higher education institutions were identified based on social media user-generated content. The AHP involves a pairwise comparison survey with 18 certified town planning professionals from different parts of the country. The study prioritized transportation as the most important sustainability attribute for planning the smart campuses of tertiary-level education institutions in Nigeria elsewhere with similar environments. The study proposed the development of a spatial data infrastructure for achieving the Africa smart city agenda.