Aliaga Project Receives NSF Grant

09-20-2012

Associate Professor of Computer Science Daniel Aliaga is the recipient of a National Science Foundation research grant. Aliaga and his co-principal investigator, Associate Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dev Niyogi, were awarded the grant for their project "STRONG Cities: Simulation Technologies for the Realization of Next Generation Cities."

The $552,000 award will be used to create a computational framework for producing next-generation new city designs or modifications to existing cities and, in doing so, will address what has been called the "ultimate design challenge": urbanization.

As noted in the project's abstract, "This research project is very timely. Mankind is now in the first century of the urban civilization. Since 2008, and for the first time in history, more than half of the world population lives in cities. Over the next 30 years the growth of the population and amount of urbanization will only increase. Hence, properly managing the growth of existing cities and the design of future cities is a vital issue that will only continue to increase in importance during the twenty-first century."

The STRONG Cities project will provide several innovative tools for social and public engagement, for urban planning, and for indicator visualization. In particular, the team will address designing, simulating, and visualizing future cities in order to evaluate building smart codes, sustainability plans, future architectural designs, alternative transportation investments, land use regulations, and environmental protection policies. The project will provide the first computational system to dynamically integrate urban land use planning and several high impact simulations thus enabling a next generation of weather-aware, socio-economically planned, drought-ready, and greening conscious cities.

Congratulations to Professor Aliaga on this award!