This project responds to COVID-19 by investigating an effective and efficient community-based approach in Baltimore City, Maryland to deploying free, broadband Internet and creating trusted open-access online education, career, and communication resources for low-income populations in the face of large-scale emergencies. This approach builds on existing research on the importance of equitable broadband Internet access and the potential of community-based solutions to bridging the digital divide. Project findings will inform the creation and use of community-led approaches to meet the technical and informational needs of vulnerable populations during and immediately following times of crisis. Specifically, it will research the creation of a trusted technical infrastructure that leverages local partnerships to provide free or low-cost Internet to communities. It will also inform how to maximize the potential of Internet connectivity to maintain continuity of education and employment activities and reduce social isolation among low-income populations.

This project will create a Community Wireless Networks (CWNs) through the deployment in Baltimore City, Maryland of a series of Point-to-Point (PtP) and Point-to-Multipoint (PtMP) connections over the 5GHz spectrum. These Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radios mounted on Points of Presence (PoP) at partner sites will provide free and secure, high throughput links to families in need. As this access is created, the project will then curate and provide support resources to facilitate the continuity of education, the expansion of teleworking career opportunities, and virtual socialization methods. The impact of these interventions will be studied through pre- and post-intervention surveys as well as remote interviews with stakeholders to evaluate the impact of having free high-bandwidth Internet on low-income families’ access to online educational, employment, and social resources both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, at the conclusion of the project participating families and community partners will offer reflections and suggestions for the future implementation of similar projects in a community focus group. Project findings seek to further inform how to meet the informational needs of vulnerable populations using a grass-roots, community-based, technology-access approach during and immediately following times of crisis. This project is highly relevant to Smart and Connected Communities program as it demonstrates tight integration of social and technology research and strong community engagement will be able to have significant impact improving quality of life in vulnerable communities in this and potentially other crises.
 

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only disrupted the lives of millions but also created exigent operational and scheduling challenges for public transit agencies. Agencies are struggling to maintain transit accessibility with reduced resources, changing ridership patterns, vehicle capacity constraints due to social distancing, and reduced services due to driver unavailability. A number of transit agencies have also begun to help the local food banks deliver food to shelters, which further strains the available resources if not planned optimally. At the same time, the lack of situational information is creating a challenge for riders who need to understand what seating is available on the vehicles to ensure sufficient distancing. In partnership with the transit agencies of Chattanooga, TN, and Nashville, TN, the proposed research will rapidly develop integrated transit operational optimization algorithms, which will provide proactive scheduling and allocation of vehicles to transit and cargo trips, considering exigent vehicle maintenance requirements (i.e., disinfection). A key component of the research is the design of privacy-preserving camera-based ridership detection methods that can help provide commuters with real-time information on available seats considering social-distancing constraints. The datasets and algorithms developed through this program will be swiftly released to the research community in order to encourage a wider collaborative effort that will help other transit agencies that face similar challenges.

The intellectual merit of the proposed research lies in the design and evaluation of integrated operational optimization for both fixed-line and on-demand transit (including paratransit) under atypical capacity constraints, which requires maximizing transit access but minimizing contact. The challenge for optimization is the uncertainties that arise due to the atypical travel time and travel demand distribution, both of which need to be learned online again due to the changed scenarios. While it is possible to optimize these transit modes separately as prior work has done, integrated optimization can lead to significantly better results. However, this is difficult as the solution space of these problems is very large. The approach is based on rapidly composing and comparing the effectiveness of principled decision-theoretic approaches such as Monte Carlo tree search, optimal trip assignments using integer programming and problem-specific heuristics, and demand aggregation for on-demand transit. To develop a model for varying travel demand, the research uses novel neural network architectures to estimate usage and seating patterns in real-time from cameras that are already installed within transit vehicles. This will enable transit agencies to obtain travel demand even when they are running fare-free operations to minimize contact with drivers. Working with partner transit agencies, the researchers will be able to make the services more accessible for the community during these challenging times. This project directly relates to Smart and Connected Communities program as it demonstrates the importance of integration of technical and social research with strong community engagement in improving resilience of transit systems due to pandemics and other crises.
 

Early evidence suggests that the COVID-19 crisis is accelerating the rate of adoption of e-commerce with more people ordering online and using delivery services to meet their needs. The embrace of e-commerce and delivery during the crisis and recovery are likely uneven, as opportunities and barriers to accessing transportation, local retailers, online technologies, and delivery services vary across the population. This study will collect critical and time-sensitive information to evaluate the extent to which people modify their shopping behavior during the pandemic and the lasting effects of technological adoption during recovery and beyond. It will reveal important trends in consumer behaviors and gaps in access that can aid planners in preparation for ongoing recovery and future emergencies. Findings will promote the health and well-being of the community by identifying opportunities to meet household needs while minimizing risk.

Using a representative sampling frame for three states, this project will survey consumers in a repeated cross-sectional online survey over the next year to understand how their shopping strategies have changed, their use of online retailing and delivery services, and their challenges in accessing food and household goods. This project will also collaborate with delivery platform firms with the goal of being able to marry trend data and information about the demand for their services before the crisis, during it, and in the recovery phase. Together, these novel and timely data will be used to examine trends in online and in-store household provisioning, identify barriers to shopping, and develop models of technology adoption. This project is highly relevant to the Smart and Connected Communities program at NSF as it explores the impact of shocks such as pandemics on communities and strongly integrates technical and social dimensions. Research results from this proposal will help better inform communities of behavioral changes in crises and potentially develop resilient controls.
 

Situated on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, the US Pacific Northwest Region and Japan face significant earthquake risks from similar geophysical conditions. The Pacific Northwest is considered overdue for a Cascadia Subduction Zone 8.0–9.2 magnitude megaquake. When it happens, the estimated direct fatalities for Oregon and Washington states are up to 10,000, with economic losses of more than $80 billion. For the comparably sized region of Japan facing a Nankai megathrust earthquake, estimated fatalities are 80,000–323,000 lives and about $900 billion in economic loss. In the immediate aftermath of a megaquake, most of the disaster response agencies and personnel, if not all, will be overwhelmed and many neighborhoods in the region will need to rely on themselves to maintain essential activities for a prolonged period. To support these essential activities, communications will need to be robust enough to function under highly uncertain circumstances, and to enable real-time and reliable information sharing for efficient resource allocation and matching. This proposal represents the US portion of a planning grant for a collaboration with researchers from multiple Japanese Universities as part of the NSF/JST collaboration for the Smart and Connected Community Program.

This planning grant builds the capacity of a partnership of engineers and planners on both sides of the Pacific Ocean (Seattle area and Japan) to developing these critically needed communications and information-sharing technologies. The joint team will partner with three communities in Washington State and the city of Nagoya in Japan, to ensure that initial technical prototype ideas have real, place-specific relevance and applicability. Focus groups and community workshops will identify specific community needs, values, resources and concerns, and provide a feedback loop for evaluating the prototypes. It is expected that by working with these communities, the technological tools to be developed will be socially integrated, not only helping communities to address the critical need to prepare for a possible mega-earthquake but also to enhance resilience in the face of a wide range of life uncertainties and disruptions, and to improve communities’ daily quality of life.

This activity is in response to NSF Dear Colleague Letter Supporting Transition of Research into Cities through the US ASEAN ((Association of Southeast Asian Nations Cities) Smart Cities Partnership in collaboration with NSF and the US State Department. Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) will be partnering with University Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN) at Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia, to develop renewable energy sources for bike lanes in KL. Kuala Lumpur is the largest city in Malaysia, and it is home to approximately 1.808 million people. The city has an 11 km long dedicated bicycle lane to reduce traffic congestion. The partnership between PVAMU and UNITEN will accelerate innovation in bike lane energy technologies. The vision of the project is to develop composite power generating cells that will generate power when bikes are ridden on the power generating cells. The energy will be harvested from composite power generating cells and will be laid on the bike lanes. The harvested energy will be used for emergency lamps along the bikeways to give more safety to the bikers or provide electric power for electronic signs installed alongside the bikeways. In addition, the harvested energy will be used for charging gadgets and provide purified water for bikers or pedestrians. The multi-sourced energy system will have applications in supplying power for (i) rainwater purification through reverse osmosis systems, (ii) emergency lights, and (iii) charging stations in the bike lanes in the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The system will be initially tested at PVAMU and will then be integrated with UNITEN and piloted in Kuala Lumpur. The project will have a huge impact on the green lifestyle of the people at Kuala Lumpur. Moreover, the research matured in this project may be suitable for use in other ASEAN cities as well as many cities and towns in the United States to provide renewable energy sources for their bike lanes.

The main goals of the project are: (i) develop a composite power generating cells that generate power under pressure, (ii) design charge collection electronic circuits to store the generated power, (iii) fabricate an integrated pad system with power generating cells, charge collection circuits, battery storage, and paint, (iv) install and test the integrated pad system at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The activity will leverage research at Prairie View A&M and UNITEN. To enable the use in bike lanes, thin-film PZT cells with optimized thickness will be developed. The energy and thickness of the film will be determined for each type of nanomaterial of the PZT cell. Experiments will be conducted to determine cells’ edge-to-edge distances, total energy output, the thickness of the PZT, and time responses of energy accumulation. A microcontroller-based energy monitoring system will manage the energy production and consumption for mobile charging applications. The cells will be configured with a matrix of paint strips on bike lanes. In addition to the composite power generating cells, solar panels will be combined in various places throughout the bike lanes to the energy-collection-rail, thus creating the sustainable multi-sourced energy system for the bike lanes. Various experiments will be performed to optimize the energy process from the bike lane. The design will be tested at PVAMU and then integrated into a bike lane infrastructure in Kuala Lumpur. The PVAMU and UNITEN team will be collaborating with city planning personnel to validate the concept and support evaluation as part of KL smart city activities.
 

Food deserts, generally defined as areas in which it is difficult to buy an affordable, high-quality fresh food, are not exclusive to urban or rural areas, but more indicative of under-served communities, low-income households, and minority neighborhoods. Food deserts are not only a health issue but also a community development and equity issue. Access to safe and nutritious food is a fundamental individual right. This project aims to address the food desert problem in Greater Richmond area, by engaging a wide range of food access-related stakeholders and utilizing the power of data analytics and advanced smart technologies to achieve sustainable food access program, leading to higher levels of quality of life and health for the city citizens.

Utilizing smart technologies to improve food access for a large segment of the community is not a straightforward task. There are many questions to be answered in order to realize the potential of these technologies, including: (1) what are the data needed to better understand and help address the food desert problem. (2) What are the social and economic impacts of food deserts? (3) What are the main factors contributing to limited food access in certain geographical areas? (4) What are the technologies and cyber-infrastructure that can help address the food access problem? (5) How to encourage micro-businesses to help tackle limited food accessibility? (6) How to present food desert data efficiently to help in decision-making?

This planning project will assemble a core group of scientists in engineering, life sciences, social work and government policy colleges to engage with community leaders and stakeholders, to identify through both quantitative and qualitative assessment the key challenges to sustainable food access in Richmond and its adjoining communities, and create the knowledge and tools for community-based sustainable food access program. This will be achieved by (1) developing a fundamental understanding of challenges facing communities due to food desert problem, (2) developing a better understanding of the factors contributing to food access problem, (3) recognizing various types of data collection in communities for addressing food access challenge, (4) deriving data-analytics techniques that can help identify effective solutions and evaluate their impacts, and (5) facilitate customized sensing, data-management, cyber-infrastructure and smart technologies solutions to develop a robust program for sustainable food access. The proposed plan will offer a research and development model that can be extended to other cities and communities.
 

Seniors (i.e., adults aged 65+) are the most rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population and have an increased risk of social isolation due to changes in lifestyle and physical health. Social connectedness, which involves establishing, sustaining, and increasing the quality of social relationships, is key to preventing or mitigating social isolation. Technology can foster social connectedness through online services and mobile applications. However, several factors, including lack of technological skills and awareness, accessibility issues, and privacy concerns may limit seniors’ use of technology-enabled services and resources, creating a generational digital divide that may contribute to social isolation. The Smart Social Connector (SSC) project addresses social isolation due to age-related barriers by creating informed strategies for seniors to learn and adopt technology and aligning resources with community needs. As such, this project promotes meaningful social connectedness among seniors that creates a sense of belonging within their community, advancing their health and welfare. Specifically, the SSC project provides a foundation for reconnecting senior residents in El Paso, Texas, a majority-Hispanic bicultural community with a growing senior demographic. This interdisciplinary, collaborative project has the potential to shift attitudes and behaviors toward seniors by restoring their visibility, value, and equitable participation in their community. With the involvement of students who are primarily from underrepresented groups, the SCC project contributes to broadening participation and preparing the next generation of professionals who possess the technical skills and knowledge required to address societal problems, specifically those relevant to senior populations.

In a strategic partnership among The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso Community College, and the City of El Paso, the project is driven by integrative and interdisciplinary research among social sciences (i.e., anthropology and cognitive psychology); computer science; engineering (i.e., systems engineering and civil engineering); and scholarship of engagement (i.e., awareness and education). The SSC goal is to develop and sustain social connectedness of seniors to improve their quality of life through the intersection of technology, community engagement, and social sciences. In collaboration with community stakeholders, this community-based participatory research project has two main objectives: (i) advance knowledge on the systemic and behavioral factors that increase social connectedness and bridge the generational digital divide in seniors; and (ii) increase social and technological connectedness for seniors through Smart City solutions. The research team will utilize a variety of methods and instruments, including assessments of computer self-efficacy and cognitive ability, team-performance measurements, virtual/physical social-network analysis, and user-centered iterative design and testing of Smart City solutions. The SSC will involve the creation of a human and technological infrastructure, including a Living Lab environment, to support service delivery and the iterative development and piloting of Smart City solutions that integrate people, technology, and information. The SSC project will support seniors in strengthening their social connectedness, increasing their technology self-efficacy, and contributing to their community. The outcomes and lessons learned from the SCC project have the potential to be applied in other cities that need to address the generational digital divide to improve seniors’ quality of life.
 

High concentrations of energy use from fossil fuels can lead to poor air quality, resulting in adverse health effects as well as economic consequences. A prime example is found where large numbers of idling vehicles congregate (e.g., schools and hospital drop-off/pick-up zones), leading to microclimates of unhealthy air. Workers, such as valet parking attendants, can spend their entire workday in these microenvironments, and children passing through these zones can experience up to 60% higher levels of pollution than adults, because of their height. These vehicle-caused, poor-air-quality microclimates offer a compelling opportunity for communities to engage with emerging technologies to take ownership of their air and the behaviors that impact its quality. This project sociotechnical approach, called SmartAir, will synergistically integrate dynamic air-quality information with social-norm feedback to positively influence decisions that affect the well-being of vulnerable individuals working in or passing through polluted microenvironments. The feedback approach for decreasing idling mirrors the feedback provided by digital speed displays, which has been shown to positively influence driver behavior (reduced speeding) and thus reduce health-impacts of that behavior (reduced traffic accidents). The proposed pilot demonstrations will take place in Northern Utah, a region that periodically experiences the poorest air quality in the country. The project SmartAir employs a comprehensive community engagement approach — from the development of the sensing and display technologies to cocreation of culturally sensitive messaging, cooperatively conducted pilot studies, and efficacy evaluation.

SmartAir will produce novel technological and behavioral-science developments. First, this project will develop wearable, calibrated, low-cost air quality sensing nodes that will support members of smart and connected communities to minimize pollution exposure. Second, this project will enable the rapid integration of sensor measurements with local meteorological information and data-screening algorithms to dynamically provide feedback to individuals about idling behavior and to workers that seek to minimize pollution exposure. Third, the SmartAir system will be integrated into behavior-change experiments and the co-creation of community-crafted messaging to influence individual choices. Comprehensive involvement of the community partners will be critical to co-develop and pilot solutions to address poor air quality and ultimately ensure a highly scalable and sustainable system. The broader impacts of this work are multifold, including the following. SmartAir will serve as a framework for closing the loop between air quality measurements and individual decision making. It will also help drive institutional decisions that reduce worker pollutant exposure and improve worker performance, career longevity, and job satisfaction. Anonymized data will be made available to support numerous personal and community-driven needs, such as health-effects studies, anti-idling campaigns, school drop-off policies, and urban/traffic planning. Additionally, this project will have a substantial outreach effort that involves community members in message crafting, data collection, and interpretation.
 

This project is a Smart and Connected Communities award. The community is part of Evanston, Illinois and is composed of the lead partners described below:

- EvanSTEM which is a in-school/out of school time (OST) program to improve access and engagement for students in Evanston who have underperformed or been underrepresented in STEM.

- McGaw YMCA which consists of 12,000 families serving 20,000 individuals and supporting technology and makerspace activities (MetaMedia) in a safe community atmosphere.

- Office of Community Education Partnerships (OCEP) at Northwestern University which provides support for the university and community to collaborate on research, teaching, and service initiatives.

This partnership will develop a new approach to learning engagement through the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) interests of all young people in Evanston. This project is entitled Interests for All (I4All) and builds upon existing research results of the two Principal Investigators (PIs) and previous partnerships between the lead partners (EvanSTEM and MetaMedia had OCEP as a founding partner). I4All also brings together Evanston school districts, OST prividers, the city, and Evanston's Northwestern University as participants.

In particular the project builds on PI Pinkard's Cities of Learning project and co-PI Stevens' FUSE Studios project. Both of these projects have explicit goals to broaden participation in STEAM pursuits, a goal that is significantly advanced through I4All. In this project, I4All infrastructure will be evaluated using quantitative metrics that will tell the researchers whether and to what degree Evanston youth are finding and developing their STEAM interests and whether the I4All infrastructure supports a significantly more equitable distribution of opportunities to youth. The researchers will also conduct in depth qualitative case studies of youth interest development. These longitudinal studies will complement the quantitative metrics of participation and give measures that will be used in informing changes in I4All as part of the PIs Design Based Implementation Research approach. The artifacts produced in I4All include FUSE studio projects, software infrastructure to guide the students through OST and in-school activities and to provide to the students actionable information as to logistics for participation in I4All activities, and data that will be available to all stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of I4All. Additionally, this research has the potential to provide for scaling this model to different communities, leveraging the OST network in one community to begin to offer professional development more widely throughout the school districts and as an exemplar for other districts. These research results could also affect strategies and policies created by local school officials and community organizations regarding how to work together to create local learning environments to create an ecosystem where formal and informal learning spaces support and reinforce STEAM knowledge.
 

This Smart and Connected Community (SCC) project will partner with two rural communities to develop STEMports, an innovative Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) learning game for workforce development. The game's activities will take players on localized Augmented Reality (AR) missions to both engage in STEM learning challenges and discover emerging STEM careers in their community, specifically highlighting innovations in the fields of sustainable agriculture and aquaculture, forest products, and renewable energy. Community Advisory Teams (CATs) and co-design teams, including youth, representatives from the targeted emerging STEM economies, and decision-makers will partner with project staff to co-design STEMports that reflect the interests, cultural contexts, and envisioned STEM industries of the future for each community.

The project will: (a) design and pilot an AR game for community STEM workforce development; (b) develop and adapt a community engagement process that optimizes community networking for co-designing the gaming application and online community; and (c) advance a scalable process for wider applications of STEMports. This project is a collaboration between the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance and the Field Day Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to both build and research the co-designing of a SCC based within an AR environment. The project will contribute knowledge to the informal STEM learning, community development, and education technology fields in four major ways:

Deepening the understanding of how innovative technological tools support rural community STEM knowledge building as well as STEM identity and workforce interest.

Identifying design principles for co-designing the STEMports community related to the technological design process.

Developing social network approaches and analytics to better understand the social dimensions and community connections fostered by the STEMport community.

Understanding how participants' online and offline interactions with individuals and experiences builds networks and knowledge within a SCC.

With the scaling of use by an ever-growing community of players, STEMports will provide a new AR-based genre of public participation in STEM and collective decision making. The research findings will add to the emerging literature on community-wide education, innovative education technologies, informal STEM learning (especially place-based learning and STEM ecosystems), and participatory design research.

Project website is: mmsa.org/stemports