Monday, April 13, 2015

Submitted by KNEW on Mon, 04/13/2015 - 8:26pm

Discovering Exciting Opportunities in CPS and Smart City Research, by Ann Majewicz (UT-Dallas)

Greetings from Seattle! We just kicked off the first session for the CPS Early-Career Investigators Workshop on Exploring Cyber-Physical System Innovations for Smart Cities. This morning's keynote presentations were a call to action - how do we develop the smart and complete cities of tomorrow?

The concept of "Smart cities" isn't just about building more knowledge; it's about connecting knowledge to action in a way that improves energy, transportation, resource production and management, healthcare, infrastructure, and a host of social and cultural interactions that color the vibrancy of city life.

We leave you with a summary of thoughts from our keynote speakers and government sponsors this morning:

Communication and power are the two largest networks in the world today. Both aim to provide a single commodity, reliably and efficiently, but only one has undergone significant, transformative change. It's time change power in the way that DARPA changed communication. It's time of the Internet of power. Steve Low (Caltech)
"A city is a place of availabilities." When you think about your research, think about the big picture - how do you go beyond sensing to meaningful action?, beyond just developing technology but growing a human-centric ecosystem?, beyond just your knowledge, but leveraging the innovation potential that only diversity can bring? Vikram Janhdyala (UW)
The study of how human users engage with both the cyber and physical world is the cornerstone of research in Urban Science. There is a degree of impatience in Urban Science - we don't have the luxury to tear down our cities and build them from scratch, we need to find ways to integrate our new knowledge with real-world applications that effect change today. Tho Nguyen (NSF)