Megan Krause / uni: mhk2152
Sustainability Issue
By 2050, it is projected that more than two-thirds of the world population will live in urban areas. The issue is the existing infrastructure in most of these metropolises was not created with the population increase and influx in mind. Therefore, as more people descend on urban areas, its infrastructure and its technology will face an unprecedented safety, mobility, health, and resource challenge.
Article with Interesting Technology
- Unfortunately, commonly an influx of people comes with more cars. Many cities were not built to handle the simultaneous pedestrian, bike, and automobile traffic. In fact, there has been a 41% increase in pedestrian deaths since 2008. There are many solutions coming out to try to gather more automated street level information to allow for meaningful changes
- Numina is a computer vision sensor solution built for streets to capture information about frequency and congestion of the three transport methods
- With the information captured, they aim to make recommendations to cities about how to make a more connected environment with safer bike lines, more pedestrian walkways, and ultimately fluid, accessible no-car location.
- Typically, these technologies involve camera analysis, where Numina is trying to capture through put information while maintaining anonymity of the travelers as much as possible.
Organizational Stakeholders
In order to make this technology effective, a city has to be interested in a carless model and have baseline infrastructure to make connected walkways and bike paths a success. The prioritization of this must come from city leadership. Once the mayor’s office is on board, city planning of public parks, transportation, and accessibility would need to work together to select and prioritize the locations of deployment.
Deployment
- Procurement of the technology from department of transportation
- Creation of working group with Department of transportation, mayor’s office, public parks, accessibility, and MTA to determine location of placement and develop overall strategy
- Installation of technology at selected sites
Sources
makeasmartcity 