BD Spokes: SPOKE: WEST: Collaborative: MetroInsight: Knowledge Discovery and Real-Time Interventions from Sensory Data Flows in Urban Spaces

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The MetroInsight project is building an end to end system for knowledge discovery from real-time data streams collected through a variety of sensors, data collection and aggregation methods. These data streams are highly dimensional with multiple sensors observing same or similar phenomena over multiple sensory spectrums and scales. These are also sometimes real-time and/or have strong timing relationships that is necessary to support metropolitan infrastructure through effective analytics and policy support. The project brings together a diverse number of partners utilities, universities, companies and cities with the ability to contribute novel tools and urban sensor data and to translate knowledge into actions. MetroInsight's unique combination of tools, data and partnerships, in part with the MetroLab Network , makes it well poised to set an example for the MetroLab programs across the nation as well as the rest of the municipal governments. The project will explore connections between multimodal datasets and urban infrastructure management to build a practical system consisting of integrated tools, as well as training a new generation of metropolitan workforce. As part of an ambitious plan for community building and workforce development, the project includes creation of new learning modules, certification programs on energy and sustainability, an online courses on sensor data analytics and new capstone projects in a new Data Science master's degree program. To achieve project goals, MetroInsight is building infrastructure for managing data, networks and processing that will support design of new algorithms and tools in the project. Specifically, the project is developing algorithms to transform multimodal urban data to a lower dimensional data that reflects underlying physical and social phenomena. These low dimensional data may consist of population level data suitable for dynamic processing to support real time monitoring and visualization by cityscale operators of various lifelines from transportation, communications to emergency response. To address technical challenges in complex and subtle spatiotemporal dynamics of interdependent urban networks, MetroInsight will develop metadata methods and tools that support discovery of operational interdependencies, quantification of uncertainties for decision support and to provide assurances related to integrity and security of data, compliance related to ethical and legal privacy expectations.