Georgia Tech pairs students with local governments and businesses to solve issues related to public safety and climate change. Here's how it works and how it's made the state more resilient and sustainable.

• The Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation initiative at Georgia Tech strives for future-readiness.
• It helps solve problems like bringing internet to residents and provides opportunities for students.
• One program, Smart Community Corps, pairs students with smart city projects like traffic monitoring.

Atlanta and other cities and towns across Georgia face multiple challenges as they strive to become more future-ready, from ensuring residents have internet connectivity to minimizing coastal flooding to addressing public transportation issues.

The Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation (SCI2) initiative at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta is stepping in to help. SCI2 leverages research and development, strategic partnerships, technology, and grant funding to help communities across the state solve these problems. In turn, it also provides opportunities for students to learn in real-world environments, said Debra Lam, SCI2's managing director and the founding executive director for the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation (PIN), a statewide public-private partnership between Georgia Tech, the state of Georgia, civic leaders, and the business community.

SCI2's work with Georgia communities starts with a "matchmaking conversation," where researchers learn about a municipality's needs, goals, and existing resources, Lam said. It's about "understanding the local context and trying to understand and isolate the problem. You're not coming in with a fancy solution at first and then trying to box it into something," she added. Some of the problems they help solve include transportation, public safety, and the effects of climate change.

Lam's team then identifies what tools are available, such as data, hardware, or software, and how SCI2 can help from a multidisciplinary applied research standpoint.

"We have the flexibility to work with many researchers, regardless of their expertise or background," she said. "The way we think about smart cities, if you give an engineer a problem, he will think about it one way versus a computer scientist. But if you start pairing up the engineer with the public policy person or the city and regional planning person with the computer scientist, it really starts to create a synergistic kind of dialogue."

Here's a closer look at how SCI2 is making Georgia communities more resilient and sustainable.

Making roadways safer for drivers and pedestrians

One of SCI2's major projects is the North Avenue Smart Corridor in Atlanta, a two-mile "living lab" for studying multimodal traffic management that launched in 2017. It uses technology like street sensors and cameras to measure and track traffic, pedestrians, cyclists, and others on the road.

"It's trying to understand how we can safely and efficiently move traffic around North Avenue, which is a busy intersection," Lam said.

The smart corridor project helped improve traffic flow and reduced vehicle crashes by 25% since its inception, Georgia Tech reported. In 2018, it also won the Mobility Award at the Smart City Expo World Congress, an international summit recognizing smart city projects around the globe.

Collecting data on sea-level rises and broadband connectivity

One of PIN's central programs is Smart Community Corps, a summer program supported by Microsoft and Gulfstream that pairs students from Georgia Tech and other colleges and universities in Georgia to work on real smart city projects.

"It's a cross between experiential learning and public service, where you can learn about smart cities by living and working in the community," Lam said.

In 2021, students logged 5,280 hours on projects like traffic monitoring in Valdosta and smart pedestrian planning in Clayton County, according to Georgia Tech. For the 2022 cohort, more than 140 students applied for 33 spots.

PIN also runs the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge (GA Smart), which is in its fifth year and was previously led by SCI2. The program offers grants and research assistance from students and faculty to communities for two years to become more resilient in the future.

Lam said 16 communities have gone through GA Smart, with projects including piloting sensors to measure sea-level flood risk along Georgia's coast, improving broadband connectivity, and studying autonomous shuttles connecting rapid transit stations around Atlanta's metro.

"We wanted to have a cohort of cities to show that there are a lot of different ways to do smart cities," Lam said, adding that all of PIN and SCI2's work is about empowering cities and "letting them tell us, 'Here's the problem or issue that we want to focus on.'"