The proposed ERC on Autonomous susTainabLe urbAn Systems (ATLAS) will create a future where autonomous systems in a community work together to facilitate its sustainability and enhance its governance, thus significantly improving the quality of life of its residents. This ERC will address the grand challenge of significantly transforming the way we build and manage our urban environment and create Sustainable Cities and Communities, which is a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of the United Nations and aligns with the goals of many agencies including the National Academy of Engineering?s (NAE) Engineering Grand Challenges. Due to the complexity of the urban systems underpinning these challenges, this ERC will need to create fundamentally new approaches to integrate autonomous systems technologies and urban systems engineering (e.g., smart urban farming, autonomous net-zero energy communities, etc.) to improve social, economic and environmental sustainability goals with novel governance strategies that respect the community?s overall autonomy (e.g., by balancing commercial interests, privacy and governance implications). This paradigm-shifting set of solutions will require a convergent research approach that balances the issues around autonomous urban systems technologies; social, economic and environmental sustainability; and governance, ethics, and privacy. Similarly, it will combine expertise from multiple knowledge domains (e.g. science, engineering, philosophy, psychology), government institutions, industry stakeholders and, crucially, community associations to ensure their feasibility and applicability in practice. This ERC planning grant will assemble the right partners and research approaches to make this vision a reality, including key researchers at other universities so as to maximize the impact. To ensure that a diversity of voices and perspectives are included, we will utilize our long-standing work with Women and Diversity in Transportation Fellowships, CMU?s formal relationship with the Community College of Allegheny County and CMU College of Engineering?s relationship with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The planning effort will provide a foundation for the academic community?s involvement in supporting and furthering NSF?s vision, mission, and goals for research programs for urban sustainability, and for collaboration in research and education programs, projects, and related activities.
This planning grant will foster convergence by engaging participants from academia, government, and industry, across a range of disciplines including civil and environmental engineering, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, public policy, systems engineering, economics, artificial intelligence, and social and decision sciences in a focused dialogue that integrates these communities to identify the greatest systems-level opportunities for maximizing the sustainability benefits and minimizing the consequences of integration of urban automation. Our ERC planning effort has two main objectives: (a) establish the partnerships required to form a diverse, trans-disciplinary and technically strong stakeholder community; and (b) identify and elaborate the main research thrusts and research questions in (and across) the domains of energy, transportation, and food with respect to the ATLAS vision. A convergent research approach to this problem, with a focus on testbeds and technology deployment will develop solutions have direct application to existing communities across the nation. A more systematic and detailed understanding of the role of autonomous systems for urban sustainability will also produce lessons that are applicable in other contexts where autonomy is becoming more prevalent (e.g., space exploration, ecology, etc.). Moreover, this improved understanding has the potential to directly improve equity and quality of life for all segments of the population.
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.
