Conference: Research Network for Sustainable Urban Infrastructure - Summer 2019. To Be Held At Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Functioning, resilient, sustainable infrastructure systems are essential to the U.S. economy. Americans depend on electricity, roads and other transport systems, food and fuel deliveries, safe drinking water, and effective waste management. Communication services need to work, everywhere and all the time. All these infrastructure services need to be delivered at low cost with broad accessibility. New technologies and economic development are shifting the requirements and expectations for these infrastructures, even while costs continue to rise. Engineers, scientists, and stakeholders with diverse skills and perspectives will come together in a two-day workshop to examine new approaches for improving the efficiency, sustainability, and resilience of the infrastructure systems of U.S. cities and regions. The workshop will develop scientific collaborations to advance the understanding of infrastructures in urban systems. Participants will seek opportunities for integrated systems that can work together efficiently and that support the communities that they serve. Researchers and practitioners with expertise spanning low-income neighborhood innovations, new technologies, and emerging engineering and science will work together to develop a foundation for new educational programs, research, and real projects that can be tested and replicated across the United States. The two-day conference will be held in the summer of 2019 to develop new perspectives for addressing persistent, complex, and emerging problems in urban infrastructure sustainability. The conference will catalyze new industry, government, and NGO collaborations with academia. A diversity of participants will bring a range of expertise and experience for deep framing of the challenges of infrastructure systems. Conference participants will reach beyond their current work to articulate and create new efforts in urban sustainability, partnering with practitioners to improve urban outcomes. The conference will be held on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Several research frameworks and practical approaches are emerging that can provide insights into how the components of urban systems the infrastructures, and the communities, the dynamics at smaller scales and at larger scales, and in different geographical circumstances interact, and how they change over time. This conference brings together diverse experts to connect approaches for understanding urban systems, that include infrastructure ecology, biologically inspired design, complex systems, and mega-scale computational capability with practitioner approaches that include corporate sustainability initiatives, community-based equity and justice, and new technology platforms for economic transformation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.