SCC-RCN:MOHERE: Mobility, Health, and Resilience in SCC: Building Capacities and Expanding Impact

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

The advent of smart and connected technologies is enabling new opportunities for innovation, improved services, enhanced quality of life, and economic growth for inhabitants of urban, suburban, and rural regions. This proposal builds a research coordination network (RCN) with a focus in the areas of mobility, health, and community resilience. This RCN will bring together diverse set of researchers spanning social and technical disciplines to explore new research ideas in these domains and how they may improve quality of life and spur economic growth. The project includes a set of structured workshops and analysis activities that are inter-disciplinary in character and will lead to the discovery of new ideas and research concepts that can have major societal impacts. The RCN includes an organizing committee led by leaders in Computer Science, Engineering, and Social Science research from multiple institutions and Community stakeholders who will plan and conduct annual workshops that will build and expand a strong Smart & Connected Communities (SCC) vision encompassing these domains and their impact on communities. The proposal will also leverage research from SCC initiatives being conducted in Taiwan, Japan, and India. This Research Collaboration Network (RCN) will take an integrative approach to community engagement and research capacity building via a sequence of inter-dependent agenda-building workshops involving experts in social, behavior, economic, and learning sciences, design, built environments, computer science, and engineering, in partnership with local and municipal community leaders and practitioners. This effort will focus on Mobility, Health and Well-Being, and Resilience of Interdependent Infrastructures as primary areas for capacity building. Partnering with communities, we will identify how at-risk populations including the homeless, recently incarcerated, adolescents, and First Nations tribes are directly impacted by mobility through public transportation, health as shaped by access to services, food, and housing, and community capacity for infrastructural resilience. Capacity building efforts will include education, outreach, and workforce development modules, and form the basis of permanent, multi-disciplinary research conferences for the emerging SCC community.