Advances in networks of smart sensors, high-bandwidth wireless communication and widespread use of smart phones allowed incorporating a cyber information layer among users, resources and infrastructure service providers, enabling smart services that achieve more efficient and dynamically adaptive allocation of resources through decentralized decisions of heterogeneous agents. Such services range from new apps that provide real-time information to users for better decisions (e.g., traffic guidance systems), new platforms for sharing resources and governing transactions among decentralized participants (e.g., ride sourcing systems such as Uber and Lyft, bike-sharing systems such as Citi Bike in New York City), and new decentralized control schemes which through careful design of incentives aim to affect user behavior for more efficient use of resources (e.g., electricity demand response programs, energy efficient buildings, and smart parking and commuting programs). Another important enabler of this revolution is our ability to collect and process vast amounts of data, which allows us to build predictive models of user characteristics and consumption patterns, peer and social network effects, and ultimately design, test, and adapt incentive mechanisms for shaping user behavior.
While such services are hailed as veritable breakthroughs and harbingers of enhanced quality of life for society, their operation relies on a combination of technological and social factors and may lead to unintended and unpredictable consequences: real-time traffic information provided to a large fraction of users leading to extreme crowding of certain routes, vulnerabilities in cyber layer leading to extreme infrastructure damage, vast amounts of data collection and analytics causing serious privacy concerns, and strategic behavior and unexpected social peer effects (through physical and online social networks) leading to herds, fads and inefficient outcomes. Design and operation of these systems necessitates a holistic and systematic framework that incorporates strategic human behavior, technological constraints, the interconnected and networked nature of interactions, privacy and security implications and resilience of the resulting system.
Building such a framework requires systematically combining tools and methodologies from several disciplines including optimization and control theory, economics, game theory and social sciences, and statistics and data science in a way that was not done before. To provide a forum for laying the foundations of such a framework, the organizers plan to host a 2 day workshop on "Smart Urban Infrastuctures" at MIT Media Lab, where the organizers bring together top researchers from academia, industry, and government to share and discuss research challenges, questions and recent ongoing work in this exciting emerging area. The Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) is a unique place to host and lead such a discussion given its long history and reputation of rigorous research in core information and decision sciences and its recent expansion of research areas to include game theory information and network economics, autonomy, optimization, inference and statistics. LIDS has also recently joined and is playing a leadership role in the newly launched MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS).
The goal of the workshop is to address complex societal challenges by advancing education and research at the intersection of statistics, data science, information and decision systems, and social sciences, and therefore provides the multi-faceted platform needed to address the challenges associated with smart infrastructure services. The workshop is organized around five panel sessions and also includes two keynote speakers. Special care has been taken in providing a balance in terms of gender and diversity of speakers and panelists. All panelists and speakers are at the forefront of this emerging discipline and its related flagship domains. There will be a student poster session showcasing the works of students. The workshop will be recorded. By presenting and outlining a vision for research opportunities in smart urban infrastructures, the workshop will bring together ideas and communities that were not systematically connected before. By explicitly taking diversity of speakers and ideas into account, the workshop will promote and foster further interdisciplinary connections and will also broadly impact the community.
