MetroLab Network’s cities and universities are partnering on research, development, and deployment (RD&D) projects to address challenges facing urban areas: inequality in income, health, and opportunity; environmental sustainability and resiliency; and aging infrastructure.
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| Project Name | Short Project Description (250 Words) | Local Government(s) Involved | University/Universities Involved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rosslyn Transportation Characteristics | This project will focus on developing “smart city” protocols for the County to make informed decisions about planning and operational investments in dense urban areas. The goal will be to collect and analyze transportation data of intersections in the Rossyln community to include the Rossyln Metro Station. This analysis will test the effectiveness of individual data collection methods for use in real-time applications, as well as expansion into other areas of Arlington County. | Arlington County (VA) | Virginia Tech, National Capital Region |
| Engineering Smart Cities Capstone Design Projects | This project will launch a two-semester senior capstone design project program offered by the Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department. Faculty from the National Campus Region and from the Blacksburg campus will mentor teams to complete a sizeable hardware, or hardware-related software project sponsored by industry or a faculty member. The goals will be to improve sensing and control of infrastructure and increase building energy efficiency and environmental quality in the County. Students will have an “industry–like” experience emphasizing technical, management and professional development in the Smart County/IoT technologies space. | Arlington County (VA) | Virginia Tech, National Capital Region |
| Community Learning | Today’s data revolution provides the opportunity for community programs, departments, and agencies to create an integrated community learning environment and to benefit from cross-departmental sharing of data, ideas, and interventions. The Virginia Tech pilot project is working with government leaders in Arlington County to plan and demonstrate the feasibility of a scalable “Community Learning” framework throughout the state of Virginia. The first phase of the project developed a sustainable data framework that encapsulates a general approach for re-purposing data, from discovery to analysis to inference. This framework links not only government administrative data sources, but data sources from the web, social media, mobile applications, commerce, and geographic information systems. In the second phase, government leaders were brought together for a Data Discovery Workshop to identify and define those issues that keep them awake at night and to identify the data sources that can provide insights into these issues. The workshop was structured to breakdown the boundaries across governmental bureaucracies through a dialogue process used to identify issues and data sources that span their boundaries. The collaboration with Arlington has continued in the next phase, which involves the scientific method, hypothesis generation, and employing the principles of experimental design to define interventions that are data-driven and evaluated using data as evidence. | Arlington County (VA) | Virginia Tech, National Capital Region |
| Columbia Pike Traffic Analysis | Virginia Tech researchers teamed with the Department Environmental Services (Transportation) and the Department of Technology Services will fuse existing traffic data and other data from the Columbia Pike corridor to derive new insights. Columbia Pike is one of the busiest bus corridors in the Commonwealth. Initially, the focus will be on exploring the corridors efficiency and throughput. Research will make some recommendations for operational efficiencies, e.g. travel time savings and on-time bus reliability service improvements. This project may expand to include analysis of additional modes of transportation (bicycle and pedestrian) and the deployment of environmental sensors. | Arlington County, VA | Virginia Tech |
| Engineering Smart Cities Capstone Design Projects | These projects are part of the two-semester senior capstone design project program offered by the Virginia Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department. Faculty from the National Campus Region and from the Blacksburg campus mentor teams to complete a significant hardware, or hardware-related software project sponsored by industry, government or university research organizations. The goals will be to improve sensing and control of infrastructure and increase building energy efficiency and environmental quality in the County. Students will have an industrylike experience emphasizing technical, management and professional development in the Smart County/IoT technologies space. | Arlington County, VA | Virginia Tech |
| Community Learning Data Driven Discovery | Today there are unprecedented opportunities for local government programs and departments to create an integrated data-driven community learning environment that can benefit from cross-departmental sharing of data, ideas, and interventions. Virginia Tech is working with government leaders in Arlington County to implement our Community Learning framework (see https://www.bi.vt.edu/sdal/about/community-learning-data-driven-discovery ). The first phase of the project developed a sustainable data framework that encapsulates a general approach for re-purposing existing local data, from discovery to analysis to inference. In the second phase, government leaders were brought together for a Data Discovery Workshop to gain exposure to data-driven governance in-action and define issues and supporting cross-program data that could provide insights. In the current phase, we are collaborating to address specific questions using the scientific method, hypothesis generation, and the principles of experimental design. The Department of Human Services wants to develop a comprehensive picture of who they serve and the services they provide. This will be used to assess if they are meeting the needs of these individuals and families. The Deputy County Manager for Communications would like to improve customer service across departments and to evaluate the options for moving from decentralized to centralized call centers. The Police Department is implementing new low-arrest and high-touch policing strategies in partnership with multiple government departments and commercial establishments. The county board would like to understand the economic return on these investments. For examples of Community Learning projects, see https://www.bi.vt.edu/sdal/projects For additional examples, see Virginia Tech Data Science for the Public Good projects: https://www.bi.vt.edu/sdal/careers/call-for-students/student-poster-presentations | Arlington County, VA | Virginia Tech |
| Cycle Atlanta | Cycle Atlanta is an open-source application developed by Georgia Institute of Technology in partnership with the City of Atlanta, Atlanta Regional Commission and Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. The Cycle Atlanta app allows individuals to track their bike routes in Atlanta and allows City sand Georgia Tech staff to use the collected data for research, transportation planning, implementation and evaluation. The collected information gives an adequate picture of current cyclist routes and enables decision-making for infrastructure improvements in the city. The application gathers demographic and route analysis, infrastructure analysis, and stress analysis, thereby informing infrastructure planning. The app also allows users to see their routes in real time and to see aggregated data to plan safe routes to their destinations. | City of Atlanta (GA) | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| MAPPD - Multi-array Phased Participatory Deployment | In July 2016 Georgia Tech and the City of Atlanta began phase one of the Multi-Array Phased Participatory Deployment, or MAPPD, with its first sensor box in Atlanta’s North Avenue smart city testbed. MAPPD has four key features: Phased: By progressively releasing sensors, MAPPD increases opportunities for in-action learning, community engagement, and continuous improvements, while reducing the implementation burden for participants and stakeholders. Interoperable: To deliver a Smart City that integrates many systems into meaningful insights for communities and decision-makers, MAPPD takes an “interoperability first” approach, privileging concerns of integration, resiliency, and sustainability. Public and Participatory: As a part of a deep commitment to Atlanta’s citizens, MAPPD includes community engagement workshops that refine systems, align stakeholders, and integrate the needs and aspirations of residents. Open: Economic development considerations underlie the technical and social features of MAPPD. Through policy recommendations, MAPPD supports open access to data and open innovation opportunities for businesses. | City of Atlanta (GA) | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| PARSE - Participatory Approaches to Researching Sensing Environments | This project, PARSE, advances an empirical and systematic understanding of the design and use of IoT (Internet of Things) technologies for enabling, organizing, and monitoring collective action in cities. The project explores the issues and opportunities of Civic IoT through ethnographic methods together with prototyping, implementation, deployment, and assessment of IoT systems, across multiple sites, each with distinctive communities. In Atlanta the project examines the deployment of a city-wide sensor array and explores low-fidelity sensors in urban foraging, and conducts community engagement workshops in conjunction with the MAPPD project. The research outcomes include: structured assessment of IoT prototype systems, qualitative data and ethnographic reports from collaborations with communities involved in the design and use of IoT for public life, and empirically informed design guidelines. | City of Atlanta (GA) | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Predictive Community Risk Reduction | Predictive Community Risk Reduction – the process of identifying safety risks followed by coordinated actions to minimize their occurrence and impact – has been shown to be effective in dramatically reducing fires abroad. The City of Atlanta is partnering with Georgia Tech, Georgia State and Experian Marketing Services (as part of Experian’s Data for Good Initiative) to conduct in-depth data analytics, experimentation and visualization to help predict future fire incidents, and develop a comprehensive train-the-trainer program to teach firefighters how to conduct home fire safety visits to effectively change high risk behaviors and reduce fire risks. | City of Atlanta (GA) | Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University Public Safety – Atlanta Fire & Rescue (AFR) |
| Predictive Policing Analytics & Video Integration Center | In this project, Georgia State University faculty will help public safety professionals predict where and when crimes may occur by monitoring crime patterns. Faculty will help the Atlanta Police Department with the use of analytics and video technology, leading to more efficient allocation of police department resources. | City of Atlanta (GA) | Georgia State University |
| Open Data Transportation Portal | This project will install volume count stations, travel time sensors, and communications platforms to pedestrian hybrid beacons to collect traffic data. The City will partner with the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) to establish a shared repository for this data collection to include plans to mitigate cyber security risks. The goal will be for the CTR to utilize computing resources at the UT-Texas Advanced Computing Center to conduct data analysis and develop technologies and processes to share data across platforms and with users. | City of Austin (TX) | University of Texas at Austin |
| Transportation Management Center Effectiveness | This project will allow improve functionality of the City’s Transportation Management Center (TMC) that addresses real-time traffic issues, special event plans, construction plans with traffic impacts, etc. The goal will be to transition to expanded operations, partner with regional transportation partners and implement a traveler information service. The CTR will measure operational and infrastructural metrics, the effectiveness of traveler information programs and the performance of intelligent traffic systems. The City of Austin and the CTR will partner to identify areas and steps for improvement as a result of these metrics. | City of Austin (TX) | University of Texas at Austin |
| Data-Driven Transportation Demand Management Program | This project will allow the City of Austin to use the Portal’s traffic data to evaluate current gridlock issues. The goal will be to devise data-driven programs to address long-haul/commuter trips, identify key demand locations, first mile/last mile services, etc. Data-driven solutions will allow the City to focus resources on high-yield solutions and partnerships with public and private entities, as well as with individual citizens. | City of Austin (TX) | University of Texas at Austin |
| Improving Bike Safety in Boston | In Spring 2013, Dahianna Lopez, a PhD student at Harvard’s School of Public Health, received a BARI Urban Doctoral Fellow to work with the Boston Police Department to analyze reports of collisions involving bicyclists. The analyses formed the basis of the City’s inaugural “Boston Cyclist Safety Report,” released in May 2013 in conjunction with a variety of efforts designed to reduce the number and frequency of accidents involving bicyclists, and a public, interactive map, hosted by BARI, where visitors can explore and download the data. BARI received a Commendation from Boston Police Commissioner William Evans and was named Community Partner of the Year by Boston Bikes for its part in the work. | City of Boston (MA) | Harvard University |
| Maintaining the Urban Commons: Examining Patterns of 311 Requests | Boston’s flagship project has been to examine constituent usage of the City of Boston’s 311 system, a telephone hotline and associated online tools by which constituents can request basic city services. This project has leveraged an extensive database of 311 requests to pursue a variety of directions, including: custodianship, or how neighborhood residents contribute to the maintenance of urban spaces; how engagement differs across individuals and neighborhoods; how the design and implementation of tools for 311 and related services influence constituent usage; and how the city might further innovate on the 311 system to reach as much of the city as possible. It includes collaborators from the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the Department of Innovation and Technology, the Office of Neighborhood Services, and faculty from Northeastern University, Harvard University, and Emerson College. Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqEXDzlCltw | City of Boston (MA) | Northeastern University, Harvard University |
| What Does a Successful School Choice System Look Like? | In 2014 the Boston Public Schools (BPS) implemented a new school choice and assignment system that they have since sought to evaluate in collaboration with faculty from four local universities (Harvard University, Northeastern University, Boston College, and Tufts University). The focus of this project has been on the different definitions of “fairness” and their realization. Early stages of the project have used records of family choices submitted to the lottery to analyze the factors that determine school preferences, and further efforts will combine administrative data with in-person surveys to examine how these preferences shifted with the new lottery and assignment system, and the implications of this for families, schools, and neighborhoods. | City of Boston (MA) | Harvard University |
| Aggregating and Anonymizing Compensation Data to Evaluate Wage Inequality | The Boston Office of Women’s Advancement is leading a unique public/private partnership to achieve pay equity between working men and women in Boston. Private sector employers, from Fortune 1000 to small businesses, have voluntarily pledged to close the gender wage gap by implementing evidence-based interventions and providing anonymized, aggregated pay data to enable baseline analysis and ongoing tracking. A team from the Boston University Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, led by Professor Azer Bestavros, partnered with the City of Boston to design and implement a multi-party computation protocol enabling individual employers to preserve privacy while providing aggregated compensation analytics for benchmarking and tracking. Designed on a web-based infrastructure, the application allows cooperating parties to combine data for aggregate analysis without revealing sensitive individualized information. | City of Boston (MA) | Boston University |
| "Seeing" Boston Neighborhoods Through Administrative Data | Modern administrative data—from 311 and 911 calls to building permit applications to Tweets—offer a detailed view of events and conditions across the city. BARI and the City of Boston have sought to capitalize on this opportunity by developing methodologies that translate these data into ecometrics, or measures of the physical and social characteristics of neighborhoods. This “big data” approach to a classic urban science technique in has the potential to be more precise and cheaper than traditional survey and observational protocols, and has generated an extended library of ecometrics, including measures of: “broken windows,” or physical disorder; civic engagement; social disorder and crime; medical emergencies; and growth and investment. These measures are now available for research, use in city dashboards, and available for public download through BARI’s Boston Data Library. | City of Boston (MA) | Northeastern University/Harvard University |
| The Street Bump System: Classifying & Prioritizing Roadway Obstacles | The Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and Boston University sought to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the City’s Street Bump iPhone application, intended to crowd-source the location of potholes and other “bumps” on city streets. The app harnesses a phone’s accelerometer and GPS recorder to register and locate roadway obstacles, but false positives and non-actionable obstacles like speed bumps and cobble stones presented early challenges. The Boston University team, led by Christos Cassandras and Ioannis Paschalidis, Professors of Systems Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, developed anomaly detection and classification algorithms to sort roadway obstacles into predefined categories and used an “anomaly index” to prioritize those requiring immediate attention. Capitalizing on this algorithm, the team helped to minimize false positives and discern between actionable and non-actionable obstacles, improving the utility of the app as a short and long-term planning tool for Boston’s Department of Public Works. | City of Boston (MA) | Boston University |
| Climate Action Challenge | This project will encourage University faculty to work on development and application of technologies, innovations and tools that help the City address emerging energy and sustainability issues. The goal will be to target City and University resources towards addressing challenges in energy efficiency, transportation and smart city information technologies. The project will build on existing partnerships established through the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), ATLAS Institute, the Sustainability Innovation Lab (SILC), and other units of the University. | City of Boulder (CO), City of Boulder (CO) | University of Colorado |
| Inclusive Boulder | This project will build on the Growing Up Boulder project to encourage resident participation in future city discussions. The goal will be to promote multi-generational engagement in community research and action through application, testing and assessment of tools and methods from storytelling to digital decision systems. This initiative will allow for the City and University faculty to jointly work to improve engagement practice, evaluate alternative engagement approaches, and focus and encourage collaborations around shared priorities to include Outreach and Engagement, CU-Engage and the Community Engagement Design and Research Center (CEDaR). | City of Boulder (CO), City of Denver (CO) | University of Colorado |
| Gray Versus Green Infrastructure Analysis | This project Plan calls for a $1.5 billion investment in citywide storm drainage improvements as part of City of Denver’s Storm Drainage Master Plan. The goal will be to develop a criteria that determines where green infrastructure (GI) solutions can be used rather than upgrading/upsizing traditional gray infrastructure. Researchers will identify needs through the GI/water quality Best Management Practices. | City of Boulder (CO), City of Denver (CO) | University of Colorado |
| Boulder Sustainable Design Workshop | The project brings the City of Boulder and the University of Colorado-Boulder into a partnership to develop sustainable designs of new commercial, affordable housing and infrastructure projects. Projects will be selected and then promoted as focal issues for classes, studios or joint student-faculty research groups. This collaboration will expand existing partnerships such as the Civic Center redevelopment. It will also build upon the eco-district model for Boulder’s sustainability goals through adaptations in environmental systems at a site, neighborhood and district scale. | City of Boulder (CO), City of Denver (CO) | University of Colorado |
| Digital Inclusion and Responsible Innovation | The City Innovation Team’s Digital Inclusion programme is an emerging portfolio focused on inclusive, ethical and responsible smart city design and development. The programme aims to promote equality of access to technology and parity in digital literacy and understanding to enable Bristol to be a fair and inclusive city. Led by the challenges and needs of the city, and in collaboration with citizens and partners, including the University of Bristol, our work on responsible innovation aims to deliver better social outcomes and dissolve digital divides. We will develop ethics guidelines and practices, and push forwards the digital inclusion and skills agenda, with a focus on both current and future needs. We are supporting the development of a refreshed consultation, engagement strategy and toolkit ensuring the council carries out high-quality public engagement and consultation to understand the views and needs of citizens, in particular, making sure that under-represented voices are heard. | City of Bristol (UK) | University of Bristol |
| Bristol One City Approach and Plan | Bristol published its first ever One City Plan in January 2019, beginning an innovative and transformative journey for the city’s diverse communities, institutions, organisations and individuals. It is the product of Bristol’s willingness to confront challenges, to co-create a vision of where it wants to be in 2050, and a commitment to put in place the institutions, partnership working and governance needed to deliver on the vision. This joined-up approach has been developed with input from the University of Bristol in areas of systems thinking and Sustainable Development Goals and is now being used to frame a number of city-scale initiatives. This year will see us publish a city-wide digital strategy, the design of a city dashboard, the co-creation of new models of city governance and leadership, and research will look at how we might align ‘grass roots’ neighbourhood plans within the One City Approach. In March 2019 the Universities of Bristol and West of England, inspired by the One City Approach, collaborated with Bristol City Council on a first ever Bristol Forum. This initiative brought together researchers and organisations from across the city to explore how city stakeholders could to tackle inequalities collectively. Planning is already under way for the 2020 Forum. | City of Bristol (UK) | University of Bristol |
| Open Data Bristol | The Council’s City Innovation Team works closely with the Jean Golding Institute (University of Bristol) to utilise data for civic good. Over 170 datasets are available, along with curated dashboards on air quality, quality of life and local elections. Initiatives include public awareness workshops showcasing how open data can support Bristol’s One City Plan (our shared 2050 City Vision), and data jams / hackathons to identify solutions that use open data to address these city challenges. Bristol’s students and digital novices are actively supported, encouraged to take part in events and offered tailored prizes. A number of open data projects have received seed funding to develop their ideas as open source solutions. The two organisations have recently submitted a joint application to the Alan Turning Institute to hold an Urban analytics data challenge. If successful, this will allow researchers to use city-wide data to model a complex, adaptive transport system. | City of Bristol (UK) | University of Bristol |
| REPLICATE (REnaissance in PLaces with Innovative Citizenship And Technology) | REPLICATE is a 5-year European pilot project that has brought together the cities of Bristol, San Sebastian and Florence to explore how technology in streets and homes benefits urban communities. The Bristol REPLICATE project is led by Bristol City Council, working in partnership with the University of Bristol as well as other local organizations. The interdisciplinary project team is collaborating with citizens to explore how technology could help them save money on their energy bills, explore new ways of travelling around, and reduce energy use and demand. The project has three themes: 1. ‘Smart Homes’ – trialling connected appliances, energy efficiency measures, and renewable energy generation; 2. ‘Smart Streets’ – exploring electric and shared-use vehicles (e.g. taxi, bus, e-bikes and a car club) supported by travel advice and parking applications; 3. ‘Created by Us’ – working with local people to explore new ways of tackling local problems with technology. Collaboration includes research looking at engagement within the ‘Smart Homes’ trial, leading into a Webinar discussing engagement and co-design in September 2019. The University of Bristol also designed and installed Telematics for the electric bike smart streets trials and is also developing and testing of a range of sensors deployed on the Smart City Platform Test Bed. Once the tests can validate accuracy, Bristol City Council will publish these data on the Open Data Platform. Amongst other things, these data will enable citizens to contribute at a critical point to the local debate on air quality and its management. | City of Bristol (UK) | University of Bristol |
| Fleet Management of Large-Scale Connected and Autonomous Vehicles in Urban Settings | This project is exploring real-time coordination of large-scale connected autonomous vehicles and advanced citywide wireless connectivity supported by Chattanooga’s advanced fiber optic network. The project investigates fleet management in extreme urban driving scenarios and addresses the corresponding challenges for connected autonomous vehicles. As identified in the report from the DARPA Urban Challenge, autonomous vehicles need to have access to each other’s information to plan safer and more efficient paths. For example, if an autonomous vehicle runs into a heavy storm, not only the GPS system might be affected, but also sensing capabilities (e.g., RADAR, LIDAR, and camera) might be decreased. In order to function safely, this vehicle needs to keep high-quality perception and situational awareness using data from other infrastructure and other vehicles. Accidents may have second-order effects, where if there is an accident on the planned route of the autonomous vehicle, real-time traffic information may be utilized for immediate motion and path planning. Early demonstration and evaluation will be conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) and Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). | City of Chattanooga (TN) | University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) |
| Fiber Network for Smart Mapping, Monitoring and Managing Underground Urban Infrastructure | This project researches the use of high speed urban telecommunication networks to sense conditions and improve management and usage of urban underground utility infrastructure, i.e. water supply, waste and storm water sewage, natural gas, electric, steam and telecommunications. The overall approach is to combine network-based sensing and data transmission to determine the location and state of underground infrastructure and provide that information in an appropriate, timely and secure format for the managers, planners and users. Success with this research will enable cities to manage, maintain and grow their infrastructure in manners that improve service, sustainability and resilience, while reducing costs, energy consumption and wasted resources. Since many of the aging underground infrastructure lies in older cities often subjected to economic distress and decay, this project has the potential to provide basic human needs - clean drinking water, functional storm and wastewater sewers, heat, electricity and telecommunications. Additionally, there is significant potential for increased resilience and rapid effective management of recovery from disasters. | City of Chattanooga; City of Burlington VT | The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC); University of Vermont (UVM) |
| Smart and Connected Communities-Planning: Health-Centric Urban Mobility | Urban mobility is the movement of people and goods into and around increasingly congested cities. Scientific innovation and technological development help to make urban mobility safer and more affordable. Multiple transportation modalities can be observed to support current urban mobility. Even though there are visible achievements, the existing urban mobility still focuses more on the traditional goal of transport, with less emphasis on health. The goal of our planning project is to build a multidisciplinary team, including academic researchers from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the University of Washington in Seattle (UW), and Portland State University (PSU), US Ignite and community stakeholders. The team will work together to plan a holistically integrative research on health-centric urban mobility that will bring a new mobility paradigm in the context of Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC). To achieve this goal, the team will have planning activities such as monthly video conferences, quarterly local community roundtables, Chattanooga/Portland summits, research capacity-building and citizen engagement challenge competition. Additionally, the cross-disciplinary team consisting of academic experts in transportation, health, environment, urban science, computer science, computational science, and data science along with the community stakeholders will identify innovative, sustainable, and economically viable options for truly health-centric urban mobility to improve quality of life in S&CC. | City of Chattanooga; City of Portland | The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC); Portland State University (PSU); University of Washington (UW) |
| Predictive Analytics Toolkit | The City of Chicago’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT) has used data analytics to address urban challenges such as effective rat baiting and better allocating resources in food inspections to anticipate potential violations. The Urban Center for Computation and Data (UrbanCCD) at The University of Chicago has partnered with DoIT to begin to develop methods to streamline this process by creating a predictive analytics toolkit to enable cities to (a) adapt and reuse methods internally, and (b) share tools and methods for adaptation for use in other cities. The toolkit will provide City personnel with open and modifiable tools to enable projects aimed at more efficiently, effectively, and accountably deploying City resources. By supporting data-driven approaches rather than relying solely on resident-reported issues and trends, cities will be able to deliver services such as for public safety and social challenges in a proactive fashion. | City of Chicago (IL) | University of Chicago |
| Array of Things | Array of Things is a low-cost, highly resilient, modular, open-source hardware/software system to support research in urban sensing and embedded ICT for “smart cities.” The platform is aimed at supporting public/private partnerships involving universities and laboratories working with cities to provide analysis and support proofs-of-concept for diagnosing and addressing urban challenges related to air quality, transportation, and severe weather, and for harnessing and supporting pilot projects exploring opportunities enabled by IoT and broadband wireless technologies. All validated raw data collected will be available for public access and accessible to researchers, engineers and scientists for use in the study of urban environments and to inform urban planning. The software and hardware developed through this project is available through open source or creative commons. | City of Chicago (IL) | University of Chicago |
| OpenGrid and Plenario | The University of Chicago and the City of Chicago have partnered to create an external real-time situational awareness data system for events and locations in Chicago, known as OpenGrid. OpenGrid will provide users with the capability to visualize data and predictions from multiple data sources in a single application, and will consist of data services, analytic services, an application programming interface (API), and an interactive map to visualize the output of the analytic services. The system will leverage Plenario, a platform created at the University of Chicago for accessing, combining, downloading, and visualizing datasets released by city, county, state, and federal governments. By providing search and exploration capabilities for integrated data sets spanning multiple data sources, the OpenGrid/Plenario systems enable scientists and policy makers to quickly find and examine data for a given geographic area (a neighborhood, a district, a city or region), for a period of time they are interested in studying. Data can then be readily extracted to apply the tools of mathematics and computation to better understand urban challenges. | City of Chicago (IL) | University of Chicago |
| Impervious Cover Forecasting & Water Quality/Quantity Modeling | This project will build upon the Berkeley Neighborhood Impervious Cover Change study and create a model that forecasts impervious cover change and the impact to storm water runoff volumes and pollutant loads. The goal will be to focus on (re)developments under 1 acre as those projects are currently not required to implement water quality Best Management Practices. Another goal will be to identify tools and solutions for new policy implementation, trading programs, and green infrastructure solutions for the City. | City of Denver (CO), City of Boulder (CO) | University of Colorado |
| Advancing Towards Smart Buildings (Sensor-Rich Built Environments) | The entire building lifecycle, from design to construction, to occupancy, use, and subsequent renovations, entails a significant digital footprint, including 2D and 3D models, information models of building structure and dynamic systems, and data streams from sensors and control systems. The curation of all this building information around a coherent multifaceted model has the potential to transform the way professionals design, construct and operate facilities and the way occupants interact with them. In particular, building information models (BIMs) enable the digital representation of a building’s physical and functional characteristics; and building automation systems (BASs) enable advanced building controls that sense and can respond to occupant presence and actions. The City’s interest in Smart Buildings is motivated by the need to improve the planning, design, construction, and operations of its facilities. The City envisions the use of BIMs as a means to support broad consultations with citizens about major construction projects, as well as to advance better design-and-constructions practices. Furthermore, using model-checking methods on BIMs, the City aims to advance the compliance of new projects with state-of-the-art design practices and improve the overall accessibility and quality of its buildings. By deploying sensors in its buildings, the City aims to collect data about building performance and, through data-analytics improve building operations and occupant comfort, reduce energy consumption and maintenance costs. | City of Edmonton (Canada) | University of Alberta |
| Project Automated Nursing Agent (Project Ana) | According to some sources, 12% of the population of the city of Edmonton is 65 and older. In 2016, the census showed that 6 million (17% of the population of Canada) were of retirement age. Due to rising life expectancy worldwide, the population of seniors living alone at home is increasing. In 2011, the Census of Population in Canada counted nearly 5 million seniors aged 65 and over of which 92.1% lived in private households. So the number increased by one million in 5 years. The benefits of companionship for the elderly to maintain a good state of their physical and mental health has been demonstrated and many seniors’ companionship services exist. However, these services are not always available and certainly do not scale with the expected significant rise of seniors’ population. One solution is a software conversational agent that could converse intelligently and could be embedded in tablets or other domestic appliances. Project ANA (Automated Nursing Agent) intends to build such an intelligent conversational agent specifically designed for the elderly. The agent not only converses by chit-chatting, answering questions, asking questions, and responding to statements, but also provides services such as managing phone calls, taking notes, reading books, reminding of events such as taking medicine, monitoring the health state of the patient and even remotely reporting to caregivers and practitioners, all that while adapting to the personal characteristics and preferences of the interlocutor. | City of Edmonton (Canada) | University of Alberta |
| Alberta Cooperative Transportation Infrastructure and Vehicular Environment (ACTIVE-AURORA) | ACTIVE-AURORA is a multi-year infrastructure project involving Alberta Transportation, Transport Canada, City of Edmonton, the University of Alberta (UofA), and the University of British Columbia (UBC). Phase 1 of ACTIVE-AURORA involved the installation of Connected Vehicle infrastructure (i.e., Roadside Equipment Units) along Anthony Henday Drive, Whitemud Drive, 23rd Avenue and the University of British Columbia Vancouver campus. This stage of the project also included the creation of two state of the art research laboratories at the UofA and UBC respectively. Since successfully completing Phase 1 of the project in 2016, local and multinational companies such as General Motors Canada, 3M, Stantec, Telus, IBI Group, and AB Traffic Supply have entered into agreements with the University of Alberta to test products and services using existing Connected Vehicle infrastructure in Edmonton. As interest and demand for Canada’s only operational Connected Vehicle testbed network grows, enhancements to existing Connected Vehicle infrastructure are critical to meeting ACTIVE-AURORA’s objectives and cementing Alberta’s reputation as a national leader in the Connected Vehicle technology space. Functioning as a comprehensive resource, ACTIVE-AURORA enables stakeholders in industry, government, and post-secondary institutions to: - Characterize the issues and factors that limit performance of existing transportation solutions; - Develop models, simulation methods and experimental techniques that allow alternative solutions to be evaluated and assessed according to actual roadway environments; and - Support government agencies to establish standards and protocols related to Connected Vehicle technology by exploring its related policy and institutional issues. | City of Edmonton (Canada) | University of Alberta |
| Gainesville Autonomous Shuttle Project (GAToRS) | This autonomous shuttle project will consist of a shuttle between the University of Florida (UF) and Downtown Gainesville. The service will operate in regular traffic conditions. The service would address mobility needs downtown by connecting the UF and City on hours where transit service is limited. Project area is limited to SE 3rd Street, 5th Avenue, Newell Drive and University Avenue. | City of Gainesville (FL) | University of Florida |
| Evolving Community Para-medicine to Meet Changing Needs | In order to address the disproportionately small number of people that generate a high volume of 911 calls and the city's subsequent deployment of expensive Fire/EMS assets to non-emergency issues, this challenge idea proposes a three-part prototype: 1. Insert behavioral insights into care choices by using data to frame choices that lead to healthier individual behavior 2.Conduct operational experiments in collaboration with healthcare system partners (i.e., fire station, vehicle and personnel utilization) 3.Create a “playbook” for other communities to develop their own Behavioral Insight and 911 Response program based upon open architecture, open source, and human centered design tools | City of Gainesville (FL) | University of Florida |
| Streetlight Interoperability Project | The City and University are working together on joint standards for streetlights and in the future will develop data interoperability standards for streetlight deployments. We hope to leverage the work of other cities who have attempted to tackle this in the past. | City of Gainesville (FL) | University of Florida |
| Digital Connectivity and 5G | Glasgow City Council and University of Glasgow are working together to attract digital infrastructure investment into Glasgow to provide enhanced digital connectivity and prepare for the roll out of 5G. Digital connectivity includes 4G in-fill, fibre, IoT and 5G. The technology for most of these is well developed and understood, and the challenge is to deliver it in a coordinated manner. However, 5G provides opportunities for future digital infrastructure with greater bandwidth and faster downloads speeds and the ability to cope with numerous high-demand applications all at once. The city government is key to enabling efficient roll out of 5G, particularly given the requirement for significantly more equipment deployment at street level. However, there is still a demand to develop use cases and to continue the development of many of the technologies that will underpin and enable 5G and future mobile connectivity. The University of Glasgow already has a laboratory-based 5G research network. The 2 larger UK MNOs (EE/BT and Vodafone) have chosen the University’s campus as their initial Scottish 5G trial sites. The University’s campus expansion creates a semi-controlled environment of over 70 city blocks in scale with a daily footfall of around 35,000. This would allow service providers and developers to test and trial deployment and use cases within a unique and safe infrastructure environment before planning a city-scale roll-out. | City of Glasgow (UK) | University of Glasgow |
| West End and Waterfront Innovation District | The University of Glasgow with support from partners, aims to establish a world class innovation district and push Glasgow into the top rank of global innovative cities. The Clinical Innovation Zone at the QEUH is attracting leading biomedical companies from all over the world, and it is growing all the time .The Interdisciplinary Innovation Zone, part of the €1.12 billion (£1 billion) development of the campus in the West End of the city, will complement its clinical counterpart– and the two together will act as the twin anchors of the district. The new Interdisciplinary Innovation Zone on the western edge of the campus will: • Provide the space and infrastructure for industry contacts to work alongside teams as researchers • Nurture a fertile community of start-ups, spinouts and other entrepreneurial activity to support Glasgow’s transformation into a global nexus of innovation • Generate opportunities for students, staff and the broader community to develop and master the next generation skills needed to excel in the global economy • Attract global talent • Power the regional economy Together the Zones will drive innovation in the University’s four key opportunity themes: smart campus, precision medicine and chronic diseases, the nano and quantum world, and cultural and creative economies. | City of Glasgow (UK) | University of Glasgow |
| Using Public Space CCTV for smarter decision making | The Glasgow Operations Centre at Eastgate manages over 450 public space CCTV cameras which monitor the city 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Glasgow City Council recognises that the data captured through CCTV could be put to greater use in making smarter decisions around people and place. The project team will work closely with Operations Centre management and Glasgow City Council’s Data Centre for Excellence to identify opportunities for data capture through the image processing of CCTV. The project will aim to capture key insights aligned to Glasgow City Council’s priorities using image processing methods. Some initial priority areas could include pedestrian footfall/ counts, traffic congestion and detection of lighting faults. As the project progresses the project will work closely with the senior officers to model, analyse and visualise any data captured as part of the project. | City of Glasgow (UK) | University of Glasgow |
| Impact of Housing Change on Neighborhoods | This project will compare city and county permit data on construction, demolition and substandard housing to the characteristics of housing and housing change in important Houston neighborhoods. The goal will be to compare current and changing neighborhood demographic characteristics including gentrification. This research from Rice University will be used to inform future housing and infrastructure policy in the City of Houston. | City of Houston (TX) | Rice University |
| Impact of Streetlights on Neighborhoods | This project will use GIS mapping on streetlights to analyze patterns reflecting when streetlights are in use or “out.” The goal will be to compare the GIS data to data associated with neighborhood characteristics, crime, traffic accidents, and other factors. This research will be used to inform the City’s future decisions on new streetlights locations and repair priorities. | City of Houston (TX) | Rice University |
| Bike Share in the Sunbelt | This project will use data provided by Bcycle, which operates Houston’s bikeshare system, to analyze bike share usage in City of Houston and other Sunbelt cities. Rice University researchers will analyze trends to improve management and operations, as well as determine future bikeshare station locations across the City. | City of Houston (TX) | Rice University |
| Food Access: a CBPR Visual Ethnography | This project will identify the spatial barriers to accessing affordable and nutritious food for women enrolled in the WIC program in Wyandotte County. The goal will be to build a qualitative visual narrative informed by participant perceptions through video interviews as they travel to their nearest grocery store. These visual transcripts will then be coded and represented as card sorting exercises for residents through a series of community workshops in partnership with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County’s Health Department. Working with WIC, KU SADP and KU School of Public Health taught a joint class to identify and survey 8 non-WIC stores in the focus population, considered as the most dense urban area of Wyandotte County, and home to over half the county's population. The class identified three stores that carried enough WIC food items to be considered as potential WIC applicants. Those three stores are now working with the Dotte Agency to apply for WIC and prototype grocery store shelving units that promote fresh food. | City of Kansas City (MO), City of Kansas City (KS) | University of Kansas |
| PlanIT Impact | This project will implement a web application that will allow designers, planners and stakeholders to better understand building or site performance with regard to energy and water use, storm water infiltration, greenhouse gas emission, proximity to public transportation, quality of place, potential return on investment, and more. The goal will be to bring information into the design process to generate performance calculations in an immersive 3D environment. The project will include both Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS to identify opportunities for development projects in the pipeline, including the Healthy Campus in Kansas City, KS that is part of the GCTC Action Cluster. | City of Kansas City (MO), City of Kansas City (KS) | |
| Smart City Overlay on Healthy Campus | This project will develop a “Healthy Campus”—a defined mixed-use area in Kansas City, KS, that clusters assets to measure public health benefits. “Smart City” components to the Campus made up of a community center and a grocery store will include: widespread wireless/wifi connectivity throughout the campus footprint, physical touchpoints within the campus for health information and service, and data integration of personal devices and public sensors. UMKC’s Center for Health Insights will use analytics to leverage environmental sensors in a public health context and will work with Campus to optimize the tech integration with a focus on outcomes. | City of Kansas City (MO), City of Kansas City (KS) | University of Missouri – Kansas City, University of Kansas |
| Smart Cities/Urban Living Lab and Privacy Regulation | This project will implement a comprehensive Smart City Initiative along the downtown streetcar corridor of Kansas City, MO. The goal will be to obtain input from 311 phone calls, utility information, crime, etc, to highlight privacy concerns from citizens and provide confidentiality levels of understanding from the City’s perspective. This project will combine research and the building of a multi-function and searchable electronic platform to help the City’s Law Department provide guidance on City governance. | City of Kansas City (MO), City of Kansas City (KS) | University of Missouri – Kansas City |
| Connecting the Dottes | This project will develop three urban scales to recognize significant spatial relationships affecting healthy food choices and walk-ability, with the ultimate goal to mobilize the community. The goal will be to develop a composite baseline knowledge map to broaden relationship building through its key stakeholders in order to engage resident leadership and track and analyze community input. It will also inventory, analyze and document the physical, environmental, technological and social fabric of selected neighborhoods by creating detailed, local maps, models and other tools to engage residents through a mapped ‘walkabout’ exercise. It will also provide a resident training workshop to support self-analysis processes, create a neighborhood vision, develop design concepts, and visualizations for the community. Finally, it will develop cost-effective prototypes of built elements, installed for community feedback to be used as guidelines for policy makers. The project has entered its second year of funding and is on track to meet its original goals. The work is supporting a range of initiatives in public parks that promote activity through walking clubs and the improvement of park infrastructure. This yields on-the-ground intelligence about park needs and improvements that can be achieved through targeted fundraising and innovation. For instance, proposals have been made to install networked sensors to evaluate park usage patterns, along with providing individual users feedback about their own benchmarking and progress on fitness stations. Based upon mobilizer feedback, Dotte Agency launched a text-messaging based service that connects the mobilizers to their neighborhood park walking group. This initiative was supported by research that concluded that walking clubs that received text message reminders to walk lowered their BMI against a control group without reminders. | City of Kansas City (MO), City of Kansas City (KS) | University of Kansas |
| Data Landscape Mapping Project | Within Liverpool City Region (LCR) data is held by a number of different public sector organisations and is used for a number of different purposes, creating a landscape that is difficult to navigate as there can often be gaps in the dataset or data is used in isolation. This project will conduct an extensive scoping review of best practice in urban data systems; covering both those which generate public open data and the governance of these systems; alongside strategic decision making tools to deliver insights that will inform the use and analysis of data in LCR to inform evidence based policy making. | City of Liverpool (UK) | University of Liverpool |
| Data Demonstrators | Linking to the ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) hosted at the University of Liverpool we will run 4 collaborative dissertations exploring a range of data challenges within the LCRCA geographic area. This will be pitched at students within the MSc Geographic Data Science run by the University of Liverpool. Outputs will comprise 4 dissertation projects; data insights and a poster presented at the CDRC annual conference. | City of Liverpool (UK) | University of Liverpool |
| Collaboration on Spatial Development Strategy | The LCRCA is responsible for writing one of the first Spatial Development Strategies, a new form of strategic plan which will look at issues of development and infrastructure across the City Region. The CA is keen to work with the University of Liverpool in producing the SDS, so this project will involve collaboration on data gathering and analysis to feed into the SDS, alongside consultation on draft iterations of the SDS through student engagement. | City of Liverpool (UK) | University of Liverpool |
| Civic Data Trust | This project will develop an integrated data and digital innovation facility that will enable LCR to become a global player in data-driven health tech by providing a secure, monitored digital environment where partners can work collaboratively to tackle major health problems, and identify, test and implement solutions; will provide researchers, technology-developers and policy-makers with a secure facility for understanding citizens’ health needs and care journeys through data linked across different sources; will provide a single framework for managing consent, preserving privacy and feeding back on data uses and more generally will extend current data linkage programmes already ongoing. | City of Liverpool (UK) | University of Liverpool |
| Households into Work (H2W) Evaluation | H2W is a high-profile project for the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA), its approach towards tackling the complex and deep rooted issues associated with long term unemployment is truly innovative and has not been tried at such a large scale in the UK before. The evaluation will combine a qualitative study capturing voices of service leads, employment advocates and householders across 6 local authorities with quantitative analysis of underpinning programme data to inform future practice. The issues faced by people on the programme are complex and varied including debt and finance, housing, mental health illness, victim of domestic violence, addiction(s), isolation and disaffection. Until such issues are tackled, finding and sustaining employment is an unlikely and unrealistic expectation. Adopting a whole household approach means issues which affect one member of the household but are caused by another member of the household, can be better addressed. | City of Liverpool (UK) | University of Liverpool |
| Detecting Unusual Objects, Actions and Events | This project will develop computational brain-inspired algorithms for detecting unusual objects, actions and events in surveillance video data, and reporting it to the concerned authorities for proactive action. The goal will be to automate and better monitor the surveillance process in order to reduce manpower/supervision and cost/maintenance for stopping crime. This project will be partnership between the Computational Intelligence Laboratory, affiliated with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the research-intensive Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. | City of Memphis (TN) | University of Memphis |
| Blight Analytics | This project will model blighted parcels and neighborhoods and recommend early actionable interventions to city officials and policy makers in order to reduce and contain blight incidences in a city. The goal will be to collect and analyze blight data in order to better allocate financial resources for prevention and correction. | City of Memphis (TN) | University of Memphis |
| Moving Up and Moving Around - Increasing Economic Prosperity | Greater Miami suffers from extreme income disparity and high localized poverty levels. Residents of greater Miami face some of the highest housing cost burdens in the nation. Limited family income also impacts transportation and housing options. These are not independent issues, but in fact need to be addressed comprehensively. Access to transportation is a pivotal factor in resilience as transportation allows people to connect with jobs, resources and each other. Local governments deploy fiscal resources to develop and maintain job training, transportation and housing assets for their residents. Economic development organizations are charged with attracting new businesses and retaining and expanding existing businesses. As part of the development of the Greater Miami and the Beaches Resilience Strategy, university partners will provide research that will help to connect, evolve and expand traditional efforts to develop practical policies and programs to support local and regional goals. | City of Miami (FL) | University of Miami, Florida International University, Miami-Dade College |
| Flight the Bite - Eliminate the Impacts of Climate-Related Disease | Globalization, urbanization and climate change are exacerbating public health challenges and traditional treatment methods may not be sufficient in our fast paced, dynamic world. Miami-Dade County is experiencing increased transmission of tropical diseases by residents and nonresidents who travel to where diseases are more prevalent and, upon returning to South Florida, provide paths for diseases to spread through mosquitoes. Federal, state, and local government epidemiologists and entomologists are taking actions to eliminate areas where mosquitoes can breed and to provide medical assistance to local populations. Emerging diseases potentially impact the health of residents and also have economic consequences for individuals, localized areas, and the greater region. The GMTB Resilience Collaborative will focus on new possible innovative courses to address these complex multi-disciplinary issues. Academic partners will be involved in literature research, actual research, and public dialogue among all involved to address issues at hand and reduce risks moving forward. | City of Miami Beach (FL) | University of Miami, Florida International University, Miami-Dade College |
| Stormwater Management | This interdisciplinary project will explore key components, tools,and approaches for successful district stormwater management. Engineering and scientific experts will address the design of stormwater management as multi-functional spaces and strategies for setting district boundaries (in relation to watersheds). Public policy experts will evaluate community involvement approaches, financial strategies, and use of GIS and other tools for communicating and analyzing alternatives. | City of Minneapolis (MN), City of Saint Paul (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Future of Minneapolis Parking Ramps | This study will evaluate the future directions of three large parking ramps in downtown Minneapolis. The ABC Ramps were completed in 1992 as part of the I-394 construction using federal Congestion Management and Air Quality (CMAQ) funds. The purpose of the ramps is to have programs that support reducing congestion and improving air quality by reducing SOV trips from the I-394 corridor. As transportation behaviors, modes, technologies and plans surrounding the ramps have changed over the first half of the ramps' design life, this study will examine opportunities for ensuring that the ramps continue to address transportation challenges over the next 25 years. | City of Minneapolis (MN), City of Saint Paul (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Modeling Transit Alternatives | In this project, the Minnesota Design Center will work with the Ramsey County Regional Rail Authority and AECOM to develop alternative routes and street configurations along the Riverview Corridor connecting downtown St. Paul to the MSP Airport and the Mall of America west of the city, and along the Rush Line connecting downtown St. Paul to White Bear Lake, Minnesota north of the city. The project will develop and use laser-cut modeling techniques that enable communities along both lines to interact with the physical models and respond to alternative configurations in ways that lead to productive conversations. Ideas are being generated from this work about shared streets, complete streets, and switchable streets that have broader implications for public rights-of-way. | City of Minneapolis (MN), City of Saint Paul (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Fine Scale Data to Inform Urban Infrastructure Transitions Towards Sustainability, Health, and Equity | The purpose of this study is to review presently available data sources at the block group or finer scale in Saint Paul that are needed to better understand impacts of the seven urban infrastructure services (water, energy, food, shelter/building, transportation/communication, sanitation/waste management, and green and public spaces) on environmental sustainability, human health, human well-being, and equity. | City of Minneapolis (MN), City of Saint Paul (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Racial Data Equity Exploration | The Saint Paul City Attorney's Office has initiated a data exploration project with the University of Minnesota with the goal to identify racial disparities in the criminal justice system and ways the Office can contribute to reducing disparities at each decision point in the life cycle of a case. | City of Minneapolis (MN), City of Saint Paul (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| NYU CUSP's Urban Observatory | Urban Observatory is a project that will persistently observe and analyze New York City in an effort to better understand the “pulse of the city” in various states, such as mobility, energy use, communications and economics. The data gathered from the Urban Observatory will ultimately be used to improve various aspects of urban life, including energy efficiency, detecting releases of hazardous material, tracking pollution plumes, aiding in post-blackout restoration of electrical power, and more. | City of New York (NY) | New York University |
| Neighborhood Lab Initiative | New York City will create a series of neighborhood innovation labs across the five boroughs. The new labs will accelerate the testing and deployment of new Smart City technologies. Developed by the City’s Chief Technology Officer, the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation, the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), and New York City Economic Development Corporation, the neighborhood innovation labs will build on the CUSP Quantified Community research facility and the Mayor’s efforts to expand free public Wi-Fi networks across the city, leveraging this connectivity and the Internet of Things to help improve day-to-day life for community residents and small businesses. | City of New York (NY) | New York University |
| Vehicle Analytics | This project will leverage vehicle monitoring systems data to gain an understanding of traffic flows and street configurations. Analytics will be used to reduce accidents and improve roadways, reduce emissions, and improve safety logistics for city vehicles. | City of New York (NY) | Columbia University |
| Stop Trash Where it Starts | This project will be a capstone for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. The goal will be to determine data-driven predictions of trash composition in order to reduce the need for manpowered surveys, discover primary factors responsible for trash on the streets and help better target interventions. The project is also part of the DEP’s campaign to prevent trash entering the City’s water bodies and will focus on developing incentives and policies to “stop trash where it starts”. | City of New York (NY) | Columbia University |
| The Newark Portal (Next Generation Information Hub) | This project will design and implement the Newark Portal, a smart communication appliance available for users to access City services and eventually serve as a hub for smart sensors and automation technology. The Portal will reside on Newark’s high-speed fiber network. Our key partners for the program are Panasonic and Princeton Partners along with the Newark Downtown District business community. An New Jersey Enterprise Development Center company, WattLots, will use solar powered street lighting technology for the Portal, and companies like iSpeech, Cybervision and Vognition will offer unique user interface technologies that extend the portal capabilities beyond conventional methods. | City of Newark (NJ) | New Jersey Institute of Technology |
| Newark Light Rail Fare Beater Project | The project will research possible technology solutions including facial recognition to help the City to minimize the amount of fare avoidance. Key partners include New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), NJIT Enterprise Development Center (EDC) company Cyberextrude and the New Jersey Transit Authority. | City of Newark (NJ) | |
| Smart City Newark IoT Test Bed | This project will launch a living lab on the streetscape in partnership with the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and the City of Newark. The goal will be to improve the status quo and a lasting community of innovators experienced in developing and testing ideas for emerging technologies. Key partners in this project include the IBM Corporation, Panasonic NA, and the New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII) board members. IBM has been selected for their IoT Foundation platform, which will provide an open, plug & play environment for innovators to develop their application rapidly. Panasonic will help provide the network hardware for sidewalks. NJIT’s Enterprise Development Center (EDC), a 95-company small business incubator, has a number of tenants that will integrate their products. | City of Newark (NJ) | New Jersey Institute of Technology |
| Smart Signals Along the Hazelwood/Almono Corridor | The team analyzed benefits of smart signal controls, which would mitigate traffic impacts of a new development in Hazelwood, a neighborhood in Pittsburgh. By building a simulated model of the Almono Corridor, they were able to compare that simulation to the Surtrac adaptive traffic light technology. | City of Pittsburgh | Carnegie Mellon University |
| 2nd Avenue Solar Canopy & DC Micro-Grid and EV Car Charging Station | The 2nd Avenue Solar Powered DC Microgrid demonstrates an integration of energy technologies to further vehicle electrification and energy optimization. 2nd Avenue is the location of the City's 40 vehicle Permits Licenses and Inspections fleet. The City is in the process of transitioning the fleet from gasoline to electric. The creation of the solar powered, DC Micro-Grid enables the City to operate a zero emissions footprint for the vehicles. Using the micro-grid technology allows to reduce conversion loss, and create resilient, islanding capability for the more efficient grid management. The proposed project serves as a replicable model and key portion of the City's USDOT and Vulcan philanthropies proposals. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | University of Pittsburgh |
| City Building Data Analytics: Energy and Air Quality | The City of Pittsburgh’s Sustainability team and researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics are gathering real time data from five City owned buildings to test, design and develop a platform that tracks and measures energy usage and air quality. This will help policy makers determine data-driven decisions, help building operators understand the energy needs of their facility, and help building occupants have a higher quality working environment. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Deploying Real-Time, Multi-Pollutant Sensors (RAMP) in East Liberty | Beginning mid-July 2016, this project will deploy 30 RAMP sensors at traffic intersections in the East End of the City of Pittsburgh. RAMP sensors measure gas-phase pollutants including CO, CO2, O3, NO2, and SO2 as well as particulate pollutants PM2.5 and PM10. RAMP sensor packages will be mounted on utility poles and provide localized information on air quality. One potential use case of this work is to use this data to develop a traffic control strategy to minimize pollutant levels. By coupling air quality sensors to the traffic management network, the team can quantify the benefits of traffic management on neighborhood level air quality. The team will also work with the community to provide collected local air quality data freely as a tool for community groups to further outreach efforts. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| District Energy Initiative | The District Energy Initiative is an over-arching “Grid of Micro-Grids” concept within and around the City of Pittsburgh. The goals of the District Energy Initiative are to create a more resilient, efficient, economic, and sustainable energy eco-system for our region. The District Energy Initiative will help position Pittsburgh as a leading city in the 21st Century by creating one of the largest and most advanced energy eco-systems in the county. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | University of Pittsburgh |
| Helping You Find Economical Energy Efficient, Excellent Housing | Edigs uses automated tools combined with crowdsourcing to change the information economy around rental housing selection in the City of Pittsburgh. The application focuses particularly on energy use. More specifically, the team is leveraging the Residential Energy Consumption Survey along with crawled and crowd-sourced data to deploy a Yelp-like interface for potential tenants. The team will ultimately expand this to include a wide variety of other information and reviews about prospective housing. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Regional Data Center | The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center is designed to support key community initiatives by making public information easier to find and use. The Data Center will provide a technological and legal infrastructure for data sharing to support a growing ecosystem of data providers and data users. The Data Center will serve as Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh’s open data portal, and provides a number of services to data publishers and users. The Data Center will also host datasets from these and other public sector agencies, academic intuitions, and non-profit organizations. The Data Center is managed by the University of Pittsburgh; Center for Social and Urban Research, and is a partnership of the University, City of Pittsburgh, and Allegheny County. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | University of Pittsburgh |
| Pittsburgh Air Quality Empowerment Lending Library | Air quality is a growing concern in the 21st century. Fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, is particularly harmful to our health and quality of life. This team aims to investigate and how citizens can be empowered to understand sources of PM2.5 in their homes and take steps to improve the air they breathe. The project provides Pittsburgh residents with access to Speck air quality monitors through their local libraries, supports citizens’ air quality explorations through discussions with air quality experts and community advocates, and evaluates how these interventions impact community engagement and empowerment around air quality issues. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Optimizing Snow Plowing Operations in Urban Road Networks | Working with the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works, the team is creating a prototype in-vehicle mobile application that will provide turn by turn routing instructions to snow plow drivers. The system will provide real-time optimization and management of snow plowing operations. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Smartphone-Based Road Inspection in the City of Pittsburgh | Researchers at CMU’s Robotics Institute and City of Pittsburgh Public Works are gathering smartphone camera data to assess road condition across Pittsburgh. The technology provides a data driven alternative to manual, visual road inspection. This helps the City make equitable decisions where and when to repair roads. This project is looking at expanding not only to road condition but also analyzing the condition of other infrastructure like street signs and lights. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Water and Sewer Systems Evaluation of Green Stormwater Infrastructure to Mitigate Sewage Overflows in the Nine Mile Run Watershed Area | The team will use sensors to determine the efficacy of three Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) installations planned for the Nine Mile Run Watershed area in the Homewood neighborhood of the City of Pittsburgh. Sensors will be deployed at the sites before installation of the GSI to evaluate rainfall amounts and flow capture at inlets during storms. This research project will evaluate the installation locations using multiple models to determine the effectiveness of different techniques for site selection and optimization within the larger region under current as well as future climate conditions. | City of Pittsburgh (PA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Dynamic Bridge Lighting: Information and Aesthetics | The Powell-Division BRT will connect to downtown Portland via the Tilikum Crossing, a unique new multimodal bridge that carries pedestrians, bicyclists, buses, streetcar, and light rail, but no cars or trucks. Tilikum Crossing is equipped with a state-of-the-art, computer-controlled LED lighting system that is linked to the hydrologic conditions of the Willamette River that it spans. Colors and patterns shift subtly with the changing velocity and temperature of the water, offering an unusual opportunity to educate bridge users and nearby residents about the hourly, daily, seasonal, and inter-annual flow variability of a river subject to climate change. Visual artists and STEM educators from Portland State University and other institutions are exploring additional light installations along the Powell-Division Corridor that can provide similar public learning experiences. This expanding range of innovative light displays can serve as a platform for new businesses whose products and services simultaneously delight and inform the public. | City of Portland (OR) | Portland State University |
| Connected Vehicles | Portland State University, the Oregon Department of Transportation, Intel, and CH2M Hill are collaborating on a connected vehicle research program to devise new ways to pay for road use and to create a robust technology platform and marketplace of connected vehicle applications that promote mobility, safety and environmental objectives. A major proposal is currently being evaluated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Portland has among the most electric vehicle charging stations per person in the US, with another 42 chargers recently added at the Portland airport. A partnership among the City, Portland General Electric, and PSU called “Electric Avenue” co-located 10 EV charging stations for public use on the PSU campus. After four years of successful deployment, it was recently relocated to PGE headquarters. The extensive network of EV charging stations and data position Portland to integrate EVs into smart city strategies, with specific opportunities still under development. | City of Portland (OR) | Portland State University |
| Powell-Division Corridor Smart City Laboratory | The interconnected issues of air quality, traffic, transportation choices, and housing affordability are foundational urban concerns, and the Powell-Division bus rapid transit line is an unparalleled opportunity to monitor the impact of policy interventions. With service on Portland’s first BRT line expected to begin in 2020, instruments will be deployed to measure many parameters before, during, and after construction, including meteorological conditions, air quality, and noise. These data will be compared with vehicular and transit traffic information that has been collected for the past decade and stored in the PORTAL dynamic database. This information will allow air quality and its public health consequences to be correlated with transportation mode splits and volumes as a function of time of day, week, and year. Key partners include the City, PSU, TriMet (transit agency), and technology providers. | City of Portland (OR) | Portland State University |
| City of San Antonio Climate Action and Adaptation Plan | The City of San Antonio, CPS Energy, University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute are partnering to create a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. The project will research best practices, create and implement a community engagement plan, establish a baseline inventory for greenhouse gases (GHG), develop future emissions scenarios, identify mitigation strategies, conduct a cost/benefit analysis for mitigation strategies, prioritize mitigation strategies and create an implementation plan. Equity goals will be determined and utilized throughout the plan development process including engagement, steering and technical committee representation, and impact. The UTSA Team will identify mitigation and adaptation strategies and assess their impacts relative to different parts of the City. This will also be informed by the GHG baseline process in which, as much as possible, the City’s GHG emissions will be distributed on different City areas. | City of San Antonio (TX) | University of Texas, San Antonio |
| SmartSA Innovation Zones | The City of San Antonio, along with its SmartSA partners (local utilities and authorities), has established Innovation Zones in three key areas of the city. The Innovation Zones will be used as proving grounds to test various types of smart city technology including: autonomous vehicles, smart streetlights, various sensors and Wi-Fi connectivity. The three areas that were identified to begin with include: Brooks City Base, Medical Center and Downtown. Downtown San Antonio is the historical and cultural center of the city. It is a hub of activity for business, government, entertainment, culture, and housing. It is adjacent to major highways and is home to major employers, an upcoming downtown tech district and has an abundance of parking lots and garages. It is also the current site of UTSA's downtown campus, and the future site of UTSA's future School of Data Science campus. In January 2019, the City hosted a Summit inviting Vendors to connect with the SmartSA partners on smart city challenges in the Innovation Zones. Throughout 2019, the City will be developing RFPs to solicit vendors around key challenges identified in the Zones. UTSA will support the City of San Antonio on developing and deploying a strategy to collect and analyze demographic data, and design stakeholder surveys within the three Innovation Zones. Data created through this process will build the scientific insight that drives the City's development of RFPs that strategically meet the needs of residents, and stakeholders in each Zone. | City of San Antonio (TX) | University of Texas, San Antonio |
| Under 1 Roof Program | The Under 1 Roof Program replaces worn and damaged roofs for disadvantaged homeowners and installs light-colored shingles and a radiant barrier to achieve a Solar Reflectance Index (SRI) of 0.65. The goal of using high-reflectance materials is to address life/safety issues, improve health outcomes, improve energy efficiency and reduce utility bills. The program is also attempting to help offset the urban heat island effect by selecting homes that are clustered together. For each roof that is installed, data is collected and analyzed to assess the effectiveness of the program. Attic and roof temperatures are measured using data loggers prior to and after installation. Utility data is also tracked for 12 months prior to and 12 months after installation to assess reductions in energy usage and energy costs. | City of San Antonio (TX) | University of Texas, San Antonio |
| Digital Divide Assessment | One in four San Antonians do not have access to broadband internet in the home in my city. A 2016 study by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) found San Antonio ranks 42nd out of 186 cities with 37.5 percent of households lacking access to broadband internet at home. An analysis I did last year of households subscriptions to fixed broadband internet shows the greatest gaps are in our inner-city Black and Latino communities. Today, these parts of our city continue to show low rates of educational attainment, and incomes. In order for the City of San Antonio to champion a plan that addresses the digital divide, a scientific study of the social, economic, and environmental dynamics of the problem is needed. This study, and the data collected from it, will provide a foundation for digital inclusion efforts taken on by the City in partnership with local organizations. | City of San Antonio (TX) | University of Texas, San Antonio |
| Forecast and Control of Transportation Network | This project will leverage data from GPS-enabled cellphones to open new horizons for traffic management to address computational challenges for real-time forecasting and control of traffic networks. | City of San Diego (CA) | University of California, San Diego |
| Green Infrastructure and Urban Agriculture | This project will develop participatory tools, spatial analytics models and civically engaged processes to help residents, municipalities, public agencies, and tribes select best locations for green infrastructure, such as rainwater harvesting and storm water biofiltration, and urban agriculture, such as community gardens and urban food forests. | City of San Diego (CA) | University of California, San Diego |
| Array of Things | Seattle will be one of nine North American and global cities to participate in the Array of Things (AoT) project by locating ten AoT sensors around the City to provide real-time, location-based data about the city’s environment, infrastructure and activity to researchers and the public. Seattle’s local AoT project is a partnership between the City (including Dept. of Information Technology, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light and Department of Neighborhoods) that will own, locate and maintain the sensors, and the University of Washington that will collect and maintain the data. This initiative has the potential to provide a wide array of data that allows researchers, policymakers, developers and residents to work together and take specific actions, to help the City to operate more efficiently and realize cost savings by anticipating and proactively addressing potential problems like urban flooding. | City of Seattle (WA) | University of Washington |
| Power System Planning: Relationship Between Temperature Change and Planning Criteria | The Seattle region has experienced unusual climate in the past few years. Power system planning criteria are directly based on expected maximum/minimum temperatures, and a shift in temperature patterns could significantly affect how the system should be designed. In this project, research will correlate the change in temperature with power system load data to detect relationships between temperature and electricity demand. In contrast to previous planning methods, where only total system load is considered and temperature from one location, research will use data from over 100 temperature sensors within Seattle to create a spatiotemporal map of how load is changing with respect to temperature. This picture will aid in developing new planning criteria by providing engineers with a clear idea of where resources should be allocated to adapt to the changing environment. Performing data analytics will also help engineers better understand factors contributing to load growth and whether recent observations reflect a temporary slowdown or a permanent trend. | City of Seattle (WA) | University of Washington |
| Increasing Access to Open Data While Protecting Data Privacy | Governments like the City of Seattle generate vast amounts of data in the course of conducting business. This data can be used to assess performance, identify insights that can lead to improved service delivery, and enable Seattle’s more than 1,500 member civic technology community to develop innovative solutions. At the same time, this data potentially contains personal information that could cause privacy harm if shared publicly. The City and University of Washington have partnered to develop policies and procedures to make more data available through the city’s open data platform while protecting the public’s privacy. Through its partnership, Seattle and University of Washington will increase will increase the amount of data publicly available, enabling additional partnerships. | City of Seattle (WA) | University of Washington |
| EnFocus - Talent (Development/Retention) Ecosystem | Indiana has experienced a chronic problem of net outmigration of college graduates. Among the 50 states, Indiana graduates the 14th highest number of bachelor degree recipients, but is 48th in keeping those graduates in the state. In an effort to combat this brain-drain, City and University officials came together to address this issue by creating enFocus through a $3M endowment. The goal of the program is to centralize the recruiting of top graduates from local universities, equip them (with support, connections and mentors), and put them in a position to create meaningful solutions to community problems. The next step for the development of this talent ecosystem was forming a network for STEM collaboration between higher education, the public school system, and local residents. Developing this ecosystem builds capacity for smart cities projects, enabling residents to take part in participatory design and leading to broader community impacts for university. | City of South Bend (IN) | Notre Dame University |
| Wireless Sandbox | The City of South Bend has committed $50,000 to leverage existing dark fiber infrastructure to provide free, reliable wireless internet access. One of the opportunities this investment creates is for a test bed for next-generation mobile wireless technologies that utilize the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. A major component of this collaboration is working alongside the Notre Dame Wireless Institute to deploy advanced wireless infrastructure for smarter cities. Through this initiative, South Bend and the Wireless Institute are already conducting wireless spectrum technology pilots and research and development projects with key players in the wireless industry. Next steps include a community-based planning project to develop a set of specific requirements for such a testbed. The project will create a focused requirements document that captures minimal technology, economic, and regulatory constraints for such a testbed to be truly meaningful, both now and in the future. | City of South Bend (IN) | Notre Dame University |
| Civic Analysis & Policy Engine (CAPE) | In order to maximize outcomes in tight fiscal environments, cities must prioritize expenditures and evaluate the quality of policies and services they provide. Instead of snapshot ad hoc reports about the conditions of the city, South Bend and Notre Dame are developing a framework where data standards and standard models can enable the city to understand the efficiency and effectiveness of its services in a way that satisfies the scientific method, allowing for replication and peer-review. The initiative will coordinate activities in data analysis and data mining, advanced statistical modeling, and human-centric design to build this platform that enables good government with 21st century tools. The first stage includes an evaluation of the South Bend’s Vacant and Abandoned initiative. | City of South Bend (IN) | Notre Dame University |
| Development of Effective Truck Route Signing Program for City of Tampa | The City of Tampa contains numerous truck traffic generators and destinations including two international shipping ports, industrial and commercial sites, numerous warehouses, a railroad inter-modal distribution center, and the Tampa International Airport. In addition, the City contains several historic neighborhoods including Ybor City and Hyde Park. All parties with an interest in trucking in the City were concerned about keeping truck traffic on appropriate roads. To guide truck drivers to drive on the designated truck route system and increase their compliance, The City of Tampa – Transportation Division would like to develop an effective citywide Truck Route Signing Program. The research team at the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida (USF) assisted the City in this important initiative by proposing and developing truck route signing program for the City of Tampa via a pilot study on selected sites. Through this project, CUTR conducted literature review, performed field investigation, designed truck route signage and experiment plan, conducted before and after study of implementing proposed signage, and evaluated their effectiveness of the proposed truck route signing program for the City of Tampa. The preliminary evaluation result showed that the proposed truck route signing program for the City of Tampa could effectively keep truck traffic on appropriate roads. The proposed program could help expand the economy of the Tampa Bay area and also preserve the quality of life within residential areas. | City of Tampa (FL) | University of South Florida |
| Tampa Bay Smart Cities Alliance | Over the past few years, there have been several regional efforts in the Tampa Bay area to apply for federal grants that would propel the Tampa Bay area forward as a cutting-edge smart city, including the U.S. DOT’s Smart City Challenge and Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment (ATCMTD) program. While the proposals have received high marks, they were not selected for funding. Out of these initiatives came a broader vision for bringing together a collaborative regional group to focus on near-term operational goals in the Tampa Bay area that will to continue to move the region forward in deploying cutting edge technologies that cut across multiple disciplines, including transportation, energy infrastructure, health, and more. This project will develop a holistic strategy to propel the region forward as a “Smart City” that will help strategically shape regional research, planning, and implementation. | City of Tampa (FL), Florida Department of Transportation | University of South Florida |
| Enhancing Cybersecurity in Public Transportation | Cybersecurity is a significant concern in all industries. Given the rapid adoption of technology in the area of automated and connected vehicles, transportation infrastructure is a particularly attractive target. The concern is so great that in 2013 the Florida Legislature requested the formation of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity , which named transportation as a key focus area. Public transportation vehicles (e.g., buses) are perhaps the most-exposed component of transit infrastructure—they carry a large number of individuals that are continuously entering and exiting and contain a constantly increasing number of different technologies that can be leveraged as potential attack vectors. Technology on-board a typical transit vehicle includes publicly accessible Wi-Fi networks, traffic signal preemption equipment that can be used to change traffic light timings, wireless fare payment technology interfaces (Near Field Communication, Bluetooth, and barcode scanning), automatic passenger counting systems, and connectivity with dispatch/command and control systems via a wireless modem or dedicated short range communications (DSRC). This project will identify and mitigate transit cybersecurity liabilities and facilitate ongoing cybersecurity information exchange among Florida transit agencies, their vendors, and cybersecurity researchers. This project will include a literature review of transit technologies and their potential vulnerabilities, a survey for transit agency staff for deployed technologies in Florida, organization of a Transit Cybersecurity Working Group, and workshops aimed to bring together the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, students of cybersecurity, cybersecurity researchers, and Florida transit agencies, to consider and evaluate the security of transit technologies. | City of Tampa (FL), Florida Department of Transportation | University of South Florida |
| Dynamic Local Government Dashboard | This project will create a more dynamic dashboard with easy to understand system-wide analysis on environmental and sustainability matters. Case Western University and Cuyahoga County will collaborate with the Northeast Ohio Sewer District, the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, the City of Cleveland, local area development corporations and others to aggregate data around energy, water and food system. The goal will be to help meter, measure, analyze, update and communicate findings on an ongoing basis in ways that are understandable and meaningful to the public. | Cuyahoga County (OH) | Case Western University |
| Advanced Building Materials for Affordable Housing | This project will develop more energy efficient and affordable building materials for lower energy impact housing options in the Glenville neighborhood of Cleveland. In a partnership with Cuyahoga County and the Famicos Foundation, Case Western University researchers and engineers will utilize advanced materials and financial tools available to local government to help develop smarter, more energy efficient and affordable housing options for people. Cuyahoga County will reserve $750,000 in Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds from its Clean Energy Finance Hub and team up with Famicos on applying for the statewide Low Income Housing Tax Credit Application. Additionally the County will match up energy efficiency and renewable energy contractors for design assistance with the project. | Cuyahoga County (OH) | Case Western University |
| Workforce Training and Professional Development | Health and Human Services (HHS) employees will receive training on the latest trends and solutions in the data science area, directly applicable to HHS needs and projects. More specifically, topics will include: - data as an asset - data organization & management - data analytics - prediction - data visualization - data life-cycle / How to tackle a data driven project Tools and methods, directly applicable to HHS will be introduced. | Fairfax County (VA) | George Mason University |
| Health and Human Services Community Needs Assessment: Prioritization Process | The 2019 Health and Human Services Needs Assessment (Assessment) will provide community leaders a snapshot of demographics trends and needs in Fairfax County. The Assessment is one tool within the Health and Human Services strategic framework that is committed to a coordinated and targeted approach to address challenges and improve outcomes across the county. The 2019 Assessment will take a deeper dive into the needs of the community; by building upon the data in the previous 2016 Assessment to identify gaps across the county, prioritize areas of need, and identify opportunities for improvement. Assessment objectives include: ▪ identify the strengths and challenges of our communities ▪ make recommendations for policy, system, and environmental changes ▪ facilitate transparency and communication with the community and stakeholders, and ▪ guide decisions at various levels across the organization | Fairfax County (VA) | George Mason University |
| Assessing Outcomes for Residents and Communities | The purpose of the Fairfax County Health and Human Services Report Card is to summarizes the impact of HHS strategies and identify where progress is being made, where progress is not being made, and why. The data collected must be shared in a format to ensure information is understandable and actionable for county leadership and program staff. | Fairfax County (VA) | George Mason University |
| Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program Performance Measurement and Evaluation Support: Tampa CV Pilot | In 2016, the USDOT initiated three CV Pilot deployments in Tampa, Wyoming, and New York. These pilots are implementing CV technologies focusing on V2I, V2V and V2X. The Tampa CV Pilot includes several CV applications, deployed across the highway, transit, and pedestrian modes on a variety of facility and vehicle types. The Pilot aims to create a connected urban environment to measure the impact of CVs in Tampa’s vibrant downtown. CUTR is leading the performance evaluation measurement and support efforts. These measurements will be used to assess impacts of the Pilot Deployment and contribute to a national data repository on CV for use by global research partners in furthering the development, deployment and standardization of Connected Vehicle Technology. CV Pilot data will come from thirteen applications transmitting and receiving information, which will be saved by Onboard Units (OBUs) and transmitted to Roadside Units (RSUs) up to ten times per second. CUTR is developing in-house server software to carry out three functions: 1) personal identifiable information removal and upload to new public repository replacing the now deprecated Research Data Exchange (RDE) and U.S. DOT internal evaluation platform; 2) Performance measurement calculation and analysis; and, 3) performance reporting to relevant stakeholders through the Performance Measurement Evaluation Dashboard (PMED). Over the course of the deployment, the performance measurement and evaluation will rely on data coming from multiple sources: CV Pilot generated data and third-party generated data (e.g., Bluetooth, weather, log events, MOVES emission database, and other traffic data). | Florida Department of Transportation, City of Tampa, Hillsborough County, Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority, Hillsborough Area Regional Transit, and Hillsborough Community College | University of South Florida |
| Screening, Brief Intervention, & Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) Pilot | This pilot will adapt the SBIRT protocol used by health providers for identifying risk levels of alcohol and drug use for use in the field by local law enforcement and EMS. The project will explore the potential of using this approach to help first responders deal with substance use issues in the community and to direct persons suspected of alcohol and/or drug abuse to being assessed for possible treatment for their alcohol/substance use, with the goal of reducing costs of substance use disorders to the criminal justice and emergency medical systems in Guilford County. A training program will be developed to prepare a limited number of Sheriff’s Deputies and EMS personnel to conduct SBI and to guide users to see appropriate treatment services personnel. Pilot outcome and feasibility data will support an NIH proposal. | Guilford County (NC) | University of North Carolina- Greensboro |
| Homeless Prevention/ Eviction Diversion Program Pilot | The goal of the program is to reduce the displacement of families and individuals from their homes through unfair and unnecessary eviction. Such evictions lead to increased financial burdens and sometimes homelessness of displaced occupants. The program will identify and seek a mutually beneficial resolution with landlords to allow occupants to remain in their homes by mediating late or outstanding rents and other payments owed by the tenant. The benefits of the program will be examined by conducting a Return on Investment and Cost Saving analysis to the community. To aid in record retrieval of imminent evictions filed with the Court, an automated, digital process for data entry and records management will be developed. Pilot data will support a proposal to the Ford Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation. | Guilford County, City of Greensboro (NC) | University of North Carolina- Greensboro |
| Opioid Overdose Rapid Response Evaluation Data Repository System | This pilot will evaluate the implementation of a post reversal contact program designed to be delivered within seven to ten days of the reversal episode to individuals that refuse to receive substance use counseling. The goal is to reduce deaths from opioids, educate on dangers of opioids and use lifestyle, increase testing and medical referral for HIV and HepC, reduce stigma, and increase voluntary participation into detox and treatment. Moreover, this evaluation will involve the creation of a data hub for law enforcement, EMS, and other first responders as well as health systems and treatment programs to securely share information about overdose incidences. The intervention project is currently funded by an allocation from the NC General Assembly. Pilot outcome data regarding intervention outcomes will support a SAMHSA proposal. | Guilford County, City of Greensboro, City of High Point (NC) | University of North Carolina- Greensboro |
| Identifying Factors Associated With Child Maltreatment Re-reporting and Recurrence, and Foster Care Re-entry | This project will identify key factors that are associated with maltreatment re-reporting, recurrence, and foster care re-entry among children involved with Hennepin County Child Protective Services between 2014 and 2016. Those key factors, in the context of best practices and research support, will be utilized by the County to tailor its current child protection response to reduce maltreatment recurrence, re-reporting, and foster care re-entry. While the form of subsequent interventions will depend upon research findings, it is anticipated that this project will result in the modification of policies, procedures, and services to children and families. | Hennepin County (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Pathways to Success: A Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project exploring out-of-school re-engagement programming | This Youth Participatory Action Research project will engage a collaborative of program staff, university researchers and youth participants to explore the Pathways to Success model. Utilizing career Pathways internships, five (5) youth will be trained as research assistants alongside the project manager, and an associate professor from the University of Minnesota’s School of Social Work. The primary research and evaluation focus of the project is to document and deeply understand the Pathways philosophy and practice from a youth perspective. A collaborative team of Hennepin County and Pathways staff will serve on a research advisory board and provide guidance through project stages. The research team will then engage in a mixed-methods qualitative inquiry to explore and document the philosophy of the program and identify the essential elements of practice and explore outcomes among participants. The team will engage project findings and explore comparative out-of-school programs while engaging local systems within which the youth are involved in an effort to generalize findings, advance best practices and inform the fields of juvenile justice and education. | Hennepin County (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Identifying and Addressing Disparities in the Criminal Justice and Health Care Systems | This project aims to use Hennepin County as a strategic case study to better understand the relationships among community supervision, health, and well-being. The team will use a mixed-methods approach to understand the health and health care patterns of community supervisees, the impact of individuals’ wellbeing on completing community supervision requirements, and the impact of health and criminal justice disparities on communities of color in Minnesota. The work will result in evidence-based policy and programmatic recommendations to help communities achieve lasting changes in health and supervision practices that are more just and equitable. | Hennepin County (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Determining Alignment of Probation Conditions | Research to examine whether probation conditions are aligned with evidence-based risk-needs-responsivity (RNR) principles for community supervision. RNR requires matching the level of supervision and services with the offender’s risk to reoffend, targeting criminogenic needs with appropriate treatment, and tailoring the intervention to the offender’s motivations, strengths and abilities. These RNR principles should be reflected in the conditions of probation (items the offender is required to do or complete as a condition of the sentence), which are ordered by the court at sentencing. But it is not clear whether such alignment is occurring. Hennepin County presents a natural experiment wherein risk/needs for one group of felony offenders is assessed prior to sentencing, and risk/needs for another group is assessed after sentencing. Our hypothesis is that conditions are better aligned to the offender’s risk/needs when the assessment informs the sentencing decision. This research study will allow us to determine the goodness of fit between the offender’s risks/needs and the conditions of probation, whether assessments influence condition setting when done prior to sentencing, and whether there are differences by race or judge in the assignment of probation conditions. | Hennepin County (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Building Healthy Children and Strong Families: Increasing Access to Early Screening and Early Intervention (EI) | This project will 1) Collect data on current HC screening rates and early intervention follow-up; 2) Conduct a Pilot Intervention project with parent navigators to support family engagement, increase screening and referral rates, connect with community partners, identify reasons why families choose or decline early intervention services; 3) Develop community outreach systems with a pilot of parent navigators to broaden HC Public Health, Thrive by Five, Follow Along and WIC. | Hennepin County (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Data & Predictive Analytics Co-Design | This multi-staged co-design process will highlight the potential of an open data platform to predict trends and improve service delivery in the county areas of education, income, employment, transportation, justice, housing, and health. By working with a cross-section of county employees to empathize with service users, generate ideas for combining data, prototype analytical models, and test a real-world scenario, we hope to better integrate data management systems while promoting a collaborative culture of data sharing. | Hennepin County (MN) | University of Minnesota |
| Homework Starts with Home Research Partnership | The team will design and implement a signature program of collaborative research to evaluate the State of Minnesota’s existing initiative, “Homework Starts with Home,” and to disseminate the best data available in Minnesota on this issue. The existing initiative is led by the state and the Heading Home Minnesota Funders Collaborative. A team of University scholars from multiple disciplines will partner with state, county, and community organizations engaged in the Homework Starts with Home initiative to evaluate progress to date and implement a high-quality research study on tailoring solutions to the needs of families in this program to achieve better outcomes. | Hennepin County (MN), State of Minnesota | University of Minnesota |
| Mitigate Costal Flooding & Adapt to Sea Level Rise | Miami-Dade County prepared county-wide reports addressing coastal flooding and long term adaptation to sea level rise. All three local governments have designed coastal flooding mitigation projects to address localized flooding from high tides and storm events, such as upgraded drainage and pumps in the City of Miami and elevated roadways and pumps in Miami Beach. FIU has created a Sea Level Solutions Center and UM has initiated research and design projects within the Schools of Architecture, Engineering, and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Under the Greater Miami and the Beaches Resilience Collaborative, partners work together to research, develop and deploy county-wide projects and facilitate intergovernmental approvals for projects. Academic partners will coordinate and facilitate independent research and class level applications in support of the local government efforts, utilizing a multi-college, interdisciplinary approach. Partners will be challenged to innovate practical solutions for both public and private sector application. | Miami-Dade County (FL) | Florida International University |
| Landslide Prediction and Analysis from Images | "This project is a proof-of-concept development of an early warning and post event analysis system for landslides. The choice of sensors are cameras, which are ubiquitous and inexpensive. We want to analyze them using state-of-the-art computer vision techniques. In parallel we want to develop mechanical models and accompanying tools that can take the results of the image analysis to predict or evaluate landslides. To that end we have shown that we can make 3D reconstructing of hillsides from images and calculate the stability of slopes with a ‘Cohesive Zone Modeling’ (CZM)approach. Additionally, we have identified cracks, debris, water, leaning trees, or deformed guard railsas possible landslide indicators that might be detected in images. A follow-up project has been started that will use cameras on buses to monitor lanslides. This is an example of the work we are doing in infrastructure. For more information on Metro21 projects focused on smart city infrastructure, click here: https://www.cmu.edu/metro21/projects/built-infrastructure/index.html. Contact metro21@cmu.edu with any questions! | Allegheny County, DPW | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Public Art + IoT = An Engaged Civic Space | "The City of Pittsburgh and civic stakeholders have a long-standing investment in memorials and public art. Most recently, the city released a database of memorials and public art locations. The location database is an excellent inventory tool but lacks a means to track civic engagement around these critical infrastructure investments. Civic arts engagement is broadly recognized as having a positive impact on city livability, safety, and educational achievements. However, measuring civic engagement with public art is challenging to quantify due to the lack of traditional arts data points such as ticket sales, membership information, and social media. This project offers a technology-based engagement platform that allows for data collection which through subsequent analysis will allow for greater understanding of the impact of these installations on the citizenry and city as a whole. By utilizing smart technology like beacons and QR codes, and deploying social engagement tools, such as unique hashtags campaigns, Pittsburgh’s system of memorials and public art can not only create and share a database of knowledge with users but engage them with the art, and track who they are, how they engage, and why they view the works. This project’s measures focus on data that provides insight into social, economic and transportation impacts of these works, yet other impacts are likely and will be discovered throughout the course of the research. This system would create a model for public art and civic engagement that could easily replicated by cities throughout the US and around the world. This is an example of the work we are doing in citizen engagement. For more information on Metro21 projects focused on smart city engagement, click here: https://www.cmu.edu/metro21/projects/citizen-engagement/index.html. Contact metro21@cmu.edu with any questions! | City of Pittsburgh | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Fire Risk Analysis: Predicting Fire Risk to Prioritize Commercial Property Fire Inspections | "The Fire Risk Analysis project uses fire incident and property data to develop predictive models of structure fire risk in partnership with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire (PBF) and the Department of Innovation and Performance (I&P). PBF conducts regular fire inspections of commercial properties, as stipulated by the municipal fire code. This project helps PBF prioritize their property inspections with data-driven insights from the fire risk analyses from machine learning models, implemented in a data dashboard and interactive map visualization, in order to target their inspections at the properties at greatest risk of fire. This is an example of the work we are doing in city operations. For more information on Metro21 projects focused on smart city operations, click here: https://www.cmu.edu/metro21/projects/city-operations/index.html. Contact metro21@cmu.edu with any questions! | Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Artificial Light Survey of Nighttime Pittsburgh | "The goal of this project is to improve the quality of life for city residents, we are undertaking a light survey of the city at resolutions finer than can be done by open satellite surveys. Light pollution, artificial light at night, is responsible for producing an unhealthy environment for plants and animals and impacts human health and safety. It wastes money and, with the introduction of LEDs, is rapidly getting worse. This is a problem facing metro areas around the world. To study the impact of light at night on the nighttime ecosystem, land use, astronomical research, health and safety, we need to study skyglow (artificial light directed upwards, spread by Rayleighs scattering) and images and spectra of the lights of the city. Camera and spectrometer enhanced drone flights can do this in a timely fashion. The data can be assembled into a high resolution Pittsburgh nighttime map and used for scientific studies of light pollution and its effects and identify the major light polluters in the city and hotspots. This is an example of the work we are doing in climate change and environment. For more information on Metro21 projects focused on smart city climate change and environment, click here: https://www.cmu.edu/metro21/projects/climate-change-and-environment/index.html. Contact metro21@cmu.edu with any questions! | City of Pittsburgh | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Reducing Congestion and Emissions with an Airbnb for Intelligent Curbs | "We propose the concept of a smart curbspace, which will be intelligently managed by an Independent System Operator connecting curb users and municipalities or other owners across time and space. Similar to an electricity market, this curbspace could have day-ahead and spot markets, as well as long-term agreements. The teams hypothesis is that automated and conventional passenger drop-off and goods delivery vehicles using an intelligent curbspace could improve energy productivity as well as reduce energy inefficiencies from congestion around delivery sites in urban areas. Using Pittsburgh as a case study with replicable results to other cities, traffic behavior at several existing Pittsburgh delivery curbspace sites will be observed and documented as model inputs. We will start with sites at Carnegie Mellon, and work with Karina Ricks from the City of Pittsburgh to identify candidate spaces in other areas in Pittsburgh. The team will then simulate the range of energy improvements possible with an intelligent curbspace. Using network and traffic data in the City of Pittsburgh, the team will simulate the combined and comparative energy productivity impacts of automated air and ground delivery modes coupled with intelligent curbspace. We will write a peer-reviewed journal paper and explore company formation. The research has the potential to define the path forward for innovations in emerging smart and efficient people and goods drop-off coupled with intelligent curbspaces. This is an example of the work we are doing in transportation and mobility. For more information on Metro21 projects focused on smart city transportation and mobility, click here: https://www.cmu.edu/metro21/projects/transportation/index.html. Contact metro21@cmu.edu with any questions! | City of Pittsburgh | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Predicting fire risk for the City of Philadelphia | A geospatial risk prediction model was built to estimate building fire risk for every property city wide. By integrating predicted risk with fire hydrant locations, we created a tool that Fire can use to allocate its limited hydrant inspection resources. | City of Philadelphia | University of Pennsylvania |
| Developing a Foreclosure Early Warning System | Combining court records with open data allowed us to predict foreclosure risk for every property Citywide, enabling a new tool a community legal non profit could use to target legal resources to families in need. | City of Philadelphia | University of Pennsylvania |
| Predicting scooter demand across US cities | Combining a first of its kind scooter dataset from 5 cities allowed students to predict demand forcities that have yet to deploy scooters. The accompanying web application allows those cities tovisualize predicted scooter demand across their cities and plan accordingly.Research Questions Addressed: Can we generalize the scooter demand experience from cities thathave deployed scooters to predict for cities that have yet to deploy scooters? | City of Philadelphia | University of Pennsylvania |
