John Britti, a fifth-year student in computational media, used to have what he calls a “woefully average” approach to data.
“Literally average, in fact,” the Atlanta resident said. “I focused mainly on finding what was normal about the data, what the aggregate looked like.”
As Britti notes, that’s not a necessarily bad way to approach data, but it’s far from the only one. Enter Yanni Loukissas, an assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, who is looking to change how people view the avalanche of information that surrounds us. Britti studied with Loukissas, and found a new way to look at information that makes him a more well-rounded student.
“Yanni pushed me and my class to look at the weird extremities of data as much as the aggregate,” he said. “What’s interesting about it and does its strangeness reveal some kind of systemic abnormality in the data as a whole?”
A former architect, Loukissas is working toward a sense of place to information design, arguing for a design ethic that encourages a belief in the idea that “All Data Are Local,” which also happens to be the title of his most recent book.
“Data aren’t placeless,” he said. “We like to talk about open data, the transparency of data, which suggests that data work anywhere, that they offer these immediate insights to those who have the tools to decipher them. I offer a different view, which is that data are just a starting point, a way in.”
“What I’m suggesting is that people adopt the sensibilities of qualitative analysis to what is traditionally quantitative work with data,” he said.
For instance, while Facebook or Zillow might see data as pixels in a bigger picture, Loukissas sees data more as the index to a book.
“An index can tell you something about a book, but it is not the whole story. It’s the same with data. There are often deeper, broader sources of knowledge that lay beyond data,” Loukissas said. “Data are just the traces.”
Loukissas’ work has ramifications in a variety of settings. It provides a critical framework that can be used to evaluate how big technology companies collect, package, and reuse data from millions of sources.
Loukissas is particularly critical of Zillow’s use of data because of the company’s practice of ingesting millions of property records meant to serve the needs of local tax assessors and residents. That data is then transformed through an algorithm that estimates and predicts home values, figures he says are created using data meant for another purpose and stripped of its original context.
For Loukissas’ information design students, the concept of data locality serves as a way to consider new and different techniques for presenting data. He cites the example of Bear 71, an interactive film that represents data and the context of its production to help tell the story of an ursine resident of Canada’s Banff National Park.
“It's such a great example of presenting not just the data set, but the data setting. There's so much more that's going on there than just these videos that are captured,” he said. “And you learn a lot about the relationship between the cameras, between where they're placed in the landscape, and how the story unfolds across that landscape. So it really takes seriously this idea that the setting matters. Data aren't just something to be extracted and mined for their own patterns independent of the origin.”
The Local Data Design Lab in the Technology Square Research Building contains the tactile representation of Loukissas’ work.
With funding from the Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center (DILAC), four students working with Loukissas set up the the Map Room in 2018. It was inspired by the first map room, built in St. Louis by artist Jer Thorpe, now Loukissas’ collaborator.
Technologically, it is simple. A sliding overhead projector displays a map onto a large sheet of craft paper rolled out across a table. Participants interact with the map by using colored markers to trace the map contours or add data on topics of interest to them: from tax assessments, to traffic, to crime, to education.
“Because it’s about place, and they live there, they’re in a position to ask, ‘Is this data aligned with my own experience and knowledge?” Loukissas said. “If not, what’s wrong? What’s missing? Is the data outdated? Is there an error? Is it reading the wrong indicator?”
The process, Loukissas says, helps participants absorb the larger lessons he is trying to impart about data: that it is not necessarily objective, or complete, and that place plays an important role in understanding what they really mean.
For Britta, working with the Map Room was illuminating.
“I think the Map Room really hits home the notion that data collection isn’t done by abstract mechanical entities,” he said. “The human touch, be it compassionate or reckless, permeates throughout. Obviously, the map room is explicitly about folk data collection, so it’s less structured by design, but I think that’s just a simple way of exposing how messy the process of data collection can be.”
In addition to the Map Room, Loukissas has created a data toolkit for Serve-Learn-Sustain designed to encourage students across campus to think about how they use data.
The tool encourages students to consider the data’s origins, purpose, and audience, think about how the data is structured, how it has been used elsewhere, and what ethical considerations use of the data may pose.
Loukissas also asks students to conduct an interview with someone involved in the creation, management, or use of the data to understand more about how it was created and used.
“Students are often asked to work with unfamiliar data sets, but they aren’t encouraged to see the people and places beyond the data,” he said. “I’m hopeful that this tool can help usher in a new sensibility about working with data.”
LMC is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
]]>Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) is on a mission to solve this challenging problem through the application of optimization and machine learning to the MARTA system. He specifically plans to increase accessibility to public transportation by creating a scalable, On-Demand Multimodal Transit System (ODMTS) model that will be validated through implementation in the Atlanta region.
The backbone of the proposed ODMTS is small shuttles that take passengers to and from high-frequency light rail and bus hubs, which will only be used in high-density corridors. The shuttles will expand the reach of the system, so people are picked up much closer to their homes and dropped off at or near their destination, making it significantly more convenient for riders to use.
To date, Van Hentenryck has conducted successful case studies on the transit systems in the mid-sized cities of Canberra, Australia and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In both cities, his multi-modal approach has shown a significant reduction in both cost and passenger wait times, and he hopes to apply the same strategies in Atlanta.
In July 2019, Van Hentenryck and his team were awarded a $1.7 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant through the LEAP HI Program to scale the optimization and machine learning algorithms that were created in Ann Arbor and Canberra for a large city like Atlanta. And in late October 2019, the Socially Aware Mobility (SAM) Lab opened for business. The SAM Lab has an interdisciplinary research team from Georgia Tech and the University of Michigan and an external advisory board comprising representatives of many key metro Atlanta transportation agencies.
“The purpose of NSF’s Leading Engineering for America’s Prosperity, Health and Infrastructure (LEAP HI) Program is to identify opportunities for fundamental engineering research to address major societal problems,” said NSF Program Director Bruce Kramer, who attended the opening event. “The SAM Lab will use new mathematics to reduce the congestion in transportation systems that impacts every resident of our major cities. The enthusiastic cooperation of local agencies has made it possible to use Atlanta as a living laboratory where potential breakthrough methods can be evaluated. NSF looks forward to following the progress of Professor Van Hentenryck and his students.”
The inauguration of the SAM Lab began with a meeting of the external advisory board followed by a panel discussion and reception to which the public was invited. The panel included Van Hentenryck, City of Atlanta Senior Transportation Policy Advisor Jacob Tzegaegbe; Uber Public Affairs Manager (Southeast) Evangeline George; The Ray Executive Director Allie Kelly; and Cox Automotive Mobility Vice President of Business Development and New Ventures Daniel Liniado. The discussion was moderated by Debra Lam, managing director for Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation at Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology. Steve McLaughlin, dean of the College of Engineering and Southern Company Chair, gave the opening remarks.
“With traffic you always have to be aware that fixing a problem in one place may create a problem in another,” said McLaughlin. “The SAM Lab knows that for reducing congestion, it requires minds that can break apart a problem and work through complexity. Road congestion is the product of interconnectedness that requires an interdisciplinary team working through all facets of the problem.”
Van Hentenryck is eager to get started on the practical aspects of the project. “We have the NSF grant, which provides for the theory, the foundation, the algorithms behind the redesign of the entire MARTA system,” he said. “But we don’t want this to stay in the lab – we want to have a pilot program in place by the end of the project. The next step is to get the partners to work together on this. We have an excellent team put together to make all this happen.”
The SAM Lab pilot program is projected to be ready for implementation in two or three years. In the meantime, Van Hentenryck is refining the ODMTS algorithm with his research partners Subhrajit “Subhro” Guhathakurta, chair and professor of the Georgia Tech School of City and Regional Planning; Patricia L. Mokhtarian, Susan G. and Christopher D. Pappas Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Yafeng Yin, professor in the University of Michigan School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
In addition, Van Hentenryck's work on mobility issues includes student researchers. Through the Vertically Integrated Projects program, a team is using data and decision science to improve mobility and accessibility in Atlanta through optimization and machine learning. He is also advising an ISyE Senior Design team that is working with MARTA to create a hypothetical redesign of MARTA’s bus network to better align routes with current usage.
“Given the rapidly evolving mobility landscape and attendant challenges facing MARTA, the opening of the SAM Lab couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time,” said Rob Goodwin, director of research and analytics at MARTA. “I look forward to working with Professor Van Hentenryck to explore new technologies and approaches that will help shape the future of transit in metro Atlanta.”
“If we successfully implement the ODMTS here in Atlanta, it will prove that the algorithm can be scaled for a major city,” Van Hentenryck added. “And then it can be effectively used in large cities around the world.”
You can stay updated on the SAM Lab's work through its Twitter account: @AwareSam.
]]>The team, comprised of spring 2019 environmental engineering graduates, earned second place with their entry—the first time a team from Georgia Tech has ever entered the competition.
The team created a design report and presented their results in Chicago on Sept. 22.
“The team was wonderful to work with,” said John Koon, professor of the practice in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “The project subject is a very complex one. Working with this design topic required the students to learn about the chemistry of a number of chemical contaminants present in wastewater, learn very sophisticated and complex treatment concepts, and understand the intricacies of the regulation of reusing wastewater for drinking purposes.”
The Georgia Tech team’s design was a project for the Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources. The work for the project initially began in Koon’s environmental engineering senior design course. The team evaluated the use of treated municipal wastewater as a source of drinking water that Gwinnett County could use to supplement its water supply.
Samuel Boyce, CE 19, said that at the beginning of the spring 2019 semester, Koon told the class about a special water reuse project in the Atlanta area that would be an entry for the student design competition at the annual WEFTEC conference for water engineering in September.
“Our team decided we would be willing to take on the challenge despite our spring graduations and uncertain futures,” Boyce said. “Over the summer, we condensed our design into a single preferred alternative with an accompanying 20-page report and presentation for our final submission to WEFTEC. Two of our four team members were not in Atlanta full time, but we were able to communicate effectively in producing our final design. Given the separation of our team through the natural forces of graduation, we were very pleased with our final presentation and our second-place title.”
Koon said the project was particularly impressive because of all the time and effort the team put into it.
“After completing their design report for the senior design course, they reworked the report to conform to the WEF competition requirements over the summer. They put together their presentation, spent lots of time honing it to be no more than the allotted 20 minutes in length, and practiced it until it was CNN-perfect—by that I mean that it was so good that it was comparable to what the major news anchor team professionals deliver.”
The Georgia Tech students were advised by a team from engineering firm Black & Veatch, led by Bernadette Drouhard, a member of the Water Environment Federation and a part-time master’s student in environmental engineering at Georgia Tech.
The Georgia Tech team was comprised of recent environmental engineering graduates who earned their bachelor’s degrees in the spring. The members are:
· Claire Anderson, a graduate student at Stanford pursuing a PhD in environmental engineering
· Samuel Boyce, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in environmental engineering at Georgia Tech
· Blake Linder, a graduate student at Georgia Tech pursuing a PhD in environmental engineering
· Eleanor Thomas, now working with a non-profit organization in Berkeley, Calif.
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“In order to increase acceptance of public transportation, we need a system that gets people where they want to go in a more convenient and affordable way,” said Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). “If we make public transportation more attractive to riders, it will decrease traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions and increase accessibility to jobs, health care, education, and food.”
Van Hentenryck has done significant research in the areas of artificial intelligence, data science, and operations research — all of which are essential to address the current problems in mobility. His goal is to create an equitable system that is both efficient for everyone and decreases reliability on personal vehicles.
Most public transportation systems in the U.S. have a significant first- and last-mile problem. “If you don’t pick people up within a quarter of a mile of where they live and drop them off very close to their final destination, you lose 90% of your ridership,” he explained.
In order to address this problem, Van Hentenryck suggests a multi-modal transportation solution in which small on-demand shuttles take passengers to and from high-frequency light rail and bus hubs, which will only be in high-density corridors. Shuttles will expand the reach of the system, so people are picked up much closer to their homes and dropped off at or near their destinations, making it significantly more convenient for riders.
In addition to addressing the first- and last-mile problem, the use of on-demand shuttles is also more cost effective and environmentally friendly. According to Van Hentenryck, most city buses are expensive to operate and drive with very few passengers on board. Replacing buses in low-demand routes with a greater number of smaller, inexpensive shuttles will increase efficiencies and lower overall costs. To further reduce greenhouse gas emissions, electric vehicles will be used whenever possible.
While the multi-modal approach may involve more transfers than the traditional model, the process will be simple and organized, allowing riders to reach their destinations in a similar amount of time to individuals driving personal vehicles. Each trip will require only one ticket, cost the same as traditional public transportation, and be completely synchronized to avoid long waits at the various transfer points. To facilitate this, Van Hentenryck and his team created algorithms that use machine learning and distributed optimization to predict ridership in real time, manage shuttle and passenger volume, and reduce wait times.
To date, Van Hentenryck has conducted successful case studies on the transit systems in the mid-sized cities of Canberra, Australia, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In both cities, his multi-modal approach has shown a significant reduction in both cost and passenger wait times, and he hopes to apply the same strategies in Atlanta.
“Atlanta is one of the most congested cities in the world, but only about 3% of the population currently uses public transportation,” Van Hentenryck said. “There is a tremendous opportunity here if we can make public transportation easier and faster to use.”
In July 2019, Van Hentenryck and his team were awarded a $1.7 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to scale the optimization and machine-learning algorithms that were created in Ann Arbor and Canberra for a large city like Atlanta. The NSF Leap HI (Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure) grant is in collaboration with civil engineering and urban planning, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), the Atlanta Regional Commission, and the City of Atlanta.
ISyE students — from undergraduates to post-docs — are also getting the chance to be a part of this exciting initiative. Van Hentenryck connected with MARTA shortly after joining the ISyE faculty in 2018, and he is leading an interdisciplinary Vertically Integrated Project team that is assisting with this initiative. In addition, in spring 2019 he advised two Senior Design teams that worked with MARTA to provide greater visibility into how patrons use the transit system — and one of the teams was a finalist for ISyE’s Best of Senior Design.
“The work that the students have done to date has been very useful,” said Rob Goodwin, MARTA’s director of research and analysis. “They are working with our data to give us a much more robust picture of how our patrons are using the system, which will allow us to see where there are opportunities and challenges in our system. We look forward to a continued relationship with Pascal and ISyE.”
Van Hentenryck and his team are eager to begin work on the grant and hope to have an impact on Atlanta traffic and accessibility. “Atlanta is a daunting challenge, which is why this project is so interesting,” Van Hentenryck noted. “We are looking at this bottom up, understanding mobility in the city and then step by step developing and integrating machine-learning and optimization algorithms for various novel mobility services that we will simulate at scale and hopefully pilot at some point.”
]]>Andrew Schrock, founder of Aloi Research and Consulting and instructor at the University of Southern California, on ethically using technology and creating intersectionality and organizing for institutional reform. He also discussed the evolving definition of a smart city – from technology to political challenges.
Sheena Erete, assistant professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University on Designing Counter Structures: Taking an Assets-Based Approach to Designing Equitable Civic Technologies. Erete is using technology to address social issues such as equity and inclusion of resource-constrained communities.
Yoshiki Yamagata, principal researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, who discussed Urban Systems Design for Smart Communities in the IoT Era, and the use of big data for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Yamagata examined how we can disseminate the usefulness of big data and AI techniques to society by establishing smart and sustainable communities.
In the afternoon, a panel of city, higher education, corporate and non-profit leaders discussed how academics can partner with other organizations around inclusion and equity.
Andrew Schrock, founder of Aloi Research and Consulting and instructor at the University of Southern California, on ethically using technology and creating intersectionality and organizing for institutional reform. He also discussed the evolving definition of a smart city – from technology to political challenges.
Sheena Erete, assistant professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University on Designing Counter Structures: Taking an Assets-Based Approach to Designing Equitable Civic Technologies. Erete is using technology to address social issues such as equity and inclusion of resource-constrained communities.
Yoshiki Yamagata, principal researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, who discussed Urban Systems Design for Smart Communities in the IoT Era, and the use of big data for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Yamagata examined how we can disseminate the usefulness of big data and AI techniques to society by establishing smart and sustainable communities.
In the afternoon, a panel of city, higher education, corporate and non-profit leaders discussed how academics can partner with other organizations around inclusion and equity.
The symposium concluded on day two with keynote addresses followed by discussion from Beth Coleman, associate professor of English Language and Literature and co-director of the Critical Media Lab at the University of Waterloo, and Laura Forlano, associate professor, Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
The Georgia Tech School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Tech Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation initiative, and Center for Computing and Society organized the symposium with funding from the Institute for People and Technology and the GVU Center.
]]>At the meeting, a discussion on best practices turned to passenger experience: How can a shared autonomous shuttle meet their needs?
Since Chamblee and Georgia Tech launched the SAV project nearly a year ago, the transportation landscape has changed. Electric scooters like Bird and Lime are becoming ubiquitous, traveling at the same maximum speed (18 miles per hour) as autonomous shuttles currently in use. Commuters also continue to use ride-share services, and Chamblee is constructing more bicycle and pedestrian paths. Like shuttles, each of these transportation options is touted as one of many solutions to bridging the first-mile/last-mile gap.
“We have a lot more competition,” said Ellen Dunham-Jones, professor in the School of Architecture and Chamblee’s research advisor on the SAV project.
She urged city officials to “jump years ahead” by creating a shuttle that adapts to various passengers, from kids going to soccer practice at Keswick Park to people enjoying the city’s bars and restaurants.
Putting passengers’ needs first will prevent the shuttle from becoming “a mode of last resort,” said Zach Lancaster, a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture. He’s developing a best practices guide that considers Chamblee’s unique demographics, and how other cities have implemented passenger-focused SAVs – Singapore’s rapid charging stations and plush interiors that foster social interaction; Las Vegas’s shuttle attendants who double as city tour guides.
Chamblee is one of four Georgia cities and counties participating in the inaugural 2018 Georgia Smart Communities Challenge. The program is now accepting applications for its second year; learn more at the Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation website.
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]]>This summer, Georgia Tech undergraduate and graduate students will join the four communities as part of the newly-formed Georgia Smart Community Corps. The full-time, interdisciplinary fellowship is dedicated to creating livable and equitable communities through smart technology and data implementation.
A panel with representatives from Georgia Tech’s College of Design and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), ULI Atlanta, AARP, and Georgia Chamber of Commerce discussed how smart communities can impact economic growth and how the smart cities conversation has evolved over the past five years.
In the afternoon, workshop attendees interested in learning about and applying for the 2019 Georgia Smart Communities Challenge participated in a hands-on proposal development workshop. Potential applicants can also learn more at an upcoming webinar on Thursday, April 11 at noon.
Proposals for the 2019 Georgia Smart Communities Challenge are due by Friday, May 3 at 5 pm; this year, Georgia Smart will once again sponsor up to four teams. Learn more at the Georgia Tech Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation website.
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]]>Through the CDS program, Gandhi has explored potential future career paths. “Last summer I worked at a company to see the industry side of life. This summer the CDS internship has helped me see that I want to do research long term, while also giving me experience to put on my resume.”
He has also discovered areas of study not offered at Rice and made new connections with other students and researchers. “The people I’ve met have been amazing.”
Other Civic Data Science projects include:
Albany Hub, which provides residents of the City of Albany with open data about energy efficiency, repairs, rental assistance, and more. Faculty mentor: Omar Asensio, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy
GwinNETTwork, a connected vehicle master plan for Gwinnett County which examines how to decrease congestion and crashes while reducing emergency vehicle wait times along Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. Faculty mentor: Angshuman Guin, Senior Research Engineer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Students will present their final projects on Wednesday, July 22 from 6-8pm in the Technology Square Research Building pre-function area. The program is part of the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU).
The Civic Data Science teams are also partnering with students from the Georgia Smart Community Corps, a full-time summer fellowship for Georgia Tech students. The goal of the fellowship program is to create livable and equitable communities through smart technology and data implementation. Like the CDS teams, fellows also work directly with cities and counties from the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge.
Akhil Chavan, who graduated from Georgia Tech in Spring 2019 with a master’s degree in engineering, is on the Smart Sea Level Sensors team. The team is working with the Chatham Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) to examine how to visualize and display data from the sea level sensors more effectively.
Chavan has been interested in climate change and environmental engineering since high school and continued to study these subjects as an undergraduate student at Georgia Tech. As he pursued his Master’s degree, he took more data science, data analytics, and computer science classes. “I wanted to see the crossover between data and computer science concepts with environmental and sustainable engineering,” Chavan said.
He called the fellowship “valuable” for connecting with local communities. “Usually in the research field you’re doing backend work that’s slow-moving and hard to visualize the end goal,” he explained. “With these [Georgia Smart] projects, there’s a lot of support within the cities. It’s nice to offer our expertise, stuff we’ve been learning about for the past couple of years. The community and the people make it a little more applicable.”
In addition to working directly with the communities, each team in the fellowship program collaborates with one or more Georgia Tech professors. Chavan’s team worked closely with Clark and Kim Cobb, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the Global Change Program.
Chavan said Cobb manages the team like a business – small teams and focus groups who have their own “clients.” The groups touch base every week to share information and updates.
The Strategic Energy Institute funds the Georgia Smart Community Corps; the program is a joint collaboration with the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain, Center for Career Discovery and Development (C2D2), and the Student Government Association (SGA).
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]]>The City of Atlanta is divided into six geographic areas or zones, with each zone split into 13 or 14 beats assigned to one patrol officer. Each officer is responsible for responding to all of the 911 calls in their assigned beat, everything from traffic incidents to serious crime.
The redesign affects three zones: Zone 6 in East Atlanta will increase by four square miles, while Zone 1 in Northwest Atlanta will grow by two square miles. Zone 2, which covers Northeast Atlanta and Buckhead, will decrease by seven square miles.
Recently, the Buckhead district has seen a spike in car thefts, burglaries, and armed robberies. At a town hall meeting with concerned residents in early March, Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields discussed how a smaller zone will allow officers to respond more quickly to 911 calls.
In a statement about the beat redesign, Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Jeff Glazier said, “It’s important that we examine our officer workload periodically, and with the help of Georgia Tech we were able to do so in a data-driven manner. We are confident these changes will balance the workload in all zones.”
Zone optimization also addresses Atlanta’s growing population, which has resulted in an increase in 911 calls and more work for the understaffed police force currently facing a shortage of 400 officers.
Atlanta’s City Council voted in February to approve the re-zoning plan and the police department officially implemented it on March 17.
The redesign initiative is Xie’s second research project in partnership with the Atlanta Police Department and funded by the Atlanta Police Foundation. In 2017 she developed an algorithm that quickly analyzes incident reports to find connections between crimes.
Xie will soon begin working with the City of South Fulton to analyze its police zones, which haven’t been updated since the 1970s.
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