What if you had the entire City of Chicago as your test bed. And you could do experiments, at scale, on everything from water to transportation to energy to the built environment. City Digital, a UI LABS lab, gets to do this every day. And it is all informed by data.
Urban infrastructure forms the backbone of our cities, our economy, and society; however, massive scale and complexity have limited our ability to monitor and improve its performance. From water security to energy burdens, from multi-modal congestion to first responder deployment, the need for creative new, data informed approaches that are effective at city scale is greater than ever. To achieve a sustainable platform for economic innovation and livability, we must be smart about how we build, update, and use urban infrastructure, which itself must become “smart” – combining new ideas in infrastructure design, materials, and management with advances in computing and data analysis.
That is what City Digital aims to do. Join us on Wednesday, June 1 at 6:00pm to hear about the first round of projects, the data they produce, and the data they use. Presenting will be the Executive Director of City Digital, Steve Fifita. We will meet, as always, at the Microsoft Technology Center Chicago at 200 E. Randolph (The Aon Center) on the 2nd floor.
And there will be pizza.