The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.
Public infrastructure investment in the US is woefully inadequate, not only to maintain existing demands, but more importantly to meet the needs of an increasingly data-driven economy. The transition to a data-driven economy depends on so-called ?smart cities? which monitor information on city utilities and operations and can respond to changing situations. Smart infrastructure systems are in an early development stage with rapidly developing applications across water, energy, transportation and buildings. Increasingly, the data analysis skills needed for engineering smart cities, are the same skills needed for many financial models and transactions. Evidence suggests that the very data smart cities collect can lead to new financing models that help fund their development. The planning grant team will bring together experts in these areas, as well as policy and law. The goal is to integrate engineering design and financial models in a decision framework that seeks to overcome technical and legal barriers for deployment of intelligent infrastructures. The societal benefits of this transition include identifying new financial instruments and resources that impacts GDP and jobs, and improves quality of life. Collaboration with public policy experts will explore how smart infrastructures can provide equitable access across rich and poor communities. Engagement with law school colleagues will address privacy and security concerns, and the impact of data monetization on the financial system. New educational programs such as a Masters in Engineering in Smart Infrastructure Finance will be aimed at training new engineers in the era of artificial intelligence. Training will help engineers engage with business and key civic stakeholders. The described interactions between these disciplines will result in new technologies that stimulate a vibrant innovation ecosystem and facilitate access and use of these technologies.
The planning grant team will explore how sensor-enabled (smart) data networks provide intelligence for the design of efficient financing mechanisms to build and operationalize smart (adaptive, resilient) infrastructure systems. The planning grant activities, including two workshops, will allow the team to engage with potential academic, business and government partners. Despite the excitement, the scalability of smart city infrastructure is hampered by limited operational benchmarking, lack of robust economic models for valuation of information, and pricing mechanisms that may attract public or private investment. The research tests the hypothesis that intelligent infrastructures generate data of sufficient scope, scale, frequency and accuracy that can be aligned with, and tested against, financial models and specifications of emerging data markets. Through these planning workshops, the proposed Center research activities and strategies to collaborate with industry, investors and the public will be further defined. The objective is to understand how physical or operational performance measurements of smart systems not only enable performance optimization or design iterations, but bring derivative value that can be used or traded in data exchanges. How can intelligent infrastructures be safely designed - and the IoT data tested - against financial or auction models for value optimization? Data-driven efficient capital such as insurance and derivatives (futures, options), as well as variable rate performance bonds and smart contracts, increasingly depend on real-time IoT (Internet of Things) information. In cooperation with industry and public partners, the ERC planning grant team will develop, test and validate engineering models, econometric and financial theory principles using sensor and financial data models in a simulation environmental, and well as based on deployed pilot smart infrastructure systems. These include smart city components such as: (storm)water utilities, intelligent transportation (roads and bridges), energy systems, and green buildings. The proposed ERC envisions structuring three trust areas reflecting complementary disciplines: (i) Risk quantification and dynamic characterization of infrastructure system data; (ii) Financial risk modeling, pricing, and information valuation in privacy- and cyber security-constrained data markets; (iii) Decision feedback models for infrastructure design, resilience management, and new investment paradigms. The integration of engineering design with information valuation and pricing, and policy is an emerging field of inquiry and practice with implications for future designs of smart infrastructures.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
