A Good System for Smart Cities

 

AI technologies can build safer and smarter cities and help us monitor and evaluate how new and critical infrastructure will affect access to housing, jobs, and public services, but city datasets are fragmented across domains and practically inaccessible to the general public. This project seeks to build an AI system that will link city datasets – extracting useful information, identifying data bias, making better and safer decisions within complex and dynamic environments, and ensuring responsible data use. Building on these different datasets, this research will also develop digital twin models for different critical infrastructures (e.g. fire, transportation, water, energy) to monitor the status, visualize different scenarios, and mitigate emerging challenges in critical infrastructures.

Team Members


Geological Sciences and Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering
Project Co-Lead
Jun-Whan Lee
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Paul Navratil
Texas Advanced Computing Center
Kijin Seong
School of Architecture
Junmin Wang
Mechanical Engineering

News


The Watson Wire
Nov. 19, 2024
The Watson Wire: Innovation & AI in City Government

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson discusses how the city is exploring and deploying various AI technologies. Good Systems is a key partner in many of these endeavors, including the development of smart hand tools that might be useful to City of Austin workers, the use of digital twins to aid real-time fire tracking and smoke analysis, and the development of standards and guidelines that help ensure the city utilizes AI ethically and responsibly.

Junfeng Jiao
June 24, 2024
Twins City
The Good Systems grand challenge at The University of Texas at Austin is developing digital twin technology to create smarter, safer cities, with their "Good System for Smart Cities" project. Using AI and real-time data, the initiative emphasizes ethical considerations and community engagement, aiming to shape more sustainable and equitable urban environments as urbanization increases. The project has started out by focusing on fire and smoke mitigation in Austin's wildland-urban interface.
tower from east
Sept. 20, 2023
Good Systems Awards Funding to Advance Ethical AI Research in Core Project Areas
Good Systems has awarded funding to five projects that investigate the ethical implications of AI technologies in society in the areas of racial justice, surveillance and privacy, smart cities, and community-robot interaction.

Documents