Concepts for Advancing Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS) Research Networks: Sustainable Integration of Urban Automation

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to convene faculty, students, and participants from industry, municipalities, and the non-profit sector to discuss groundbreaking topics for research on applications of the integration of new automated technologies into cities and communities. The U.S. is currently at the beginning of an age of advanced automated technology in transportation, energy systems, buildings, agriculture, and infrastructure. For example, sensing and computing technology can improve management of facilities, reduce traffic congestion, enhance community resilience, improve air quality, and inform emergency response decisions -- depending on use, deployment, and systems impacts. There is a critical near-term need to understand the opportunities for, and impacts of, integrating these technologies in communities, and this workshop will contribute to this need by bringing together diverse stakeholders to develop the path forward. This workshop will foster convergence by engaging diverse participants from academia, government, and industry, across a range of disciplines in a focused dialogue that integrates these communities to identify systems-level opportunities for maximizing the benefits and minimizing the consequences of integration of automation technologies into cities and communities. The workshop will recruit a diverse group of junior faculty, postdocs, and emerging graduate students to the workshop, both to benefit from their perspectives and to connect them with collaborators and mentors. The workshop will develop a list of the most promising emerging research opportunities of integrating automation into cities and communities, and develop workshop outputs that can direct research efforts and future investments toward the most critical needs in the next five to ten years. 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.