As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, new approaches are sought to tackle the accompanying urban challenges with strained municipal budgets. Cities are often thought of as highly complex living organisms consisting of ever-evolving and interconnected social and physical processes. In today’s data-rich environment valuable new insights can be gained into these complex processes that can support management and policies that lead to improved efficiencies, sustainability, equity, resilience and livability.
Specific ongoing research includes infrastructure monitoring and condition assessment, urban building energy use modeling, traffic congestion, road safety, emergency response service optimization, wind flow in urban settings, natural hazard resilience and municipal service delivery. In this application domain for AI, an important aspect of the research is also the collection of data from new sensor modalities and communications networks. Finally, because smart cities AI research frequently operates within the context of public data; privacy, security and safety implications of processes and their outcomes intended or otherwise need to be carefully considered. This facet of smart cities research often presents its own additional technical challenges when seeking to convert data into knowledge.