Proposal: Urban Informatics for Sustainability and Resilience (UrbInSuRe) Center
8/16/2014
UrbInSuRe Center aims to envision the future city that is both smarter and more livable, and create the
knowledge and technologies to enable today’s cities to move towards that vision. Over half of the
world’s population currently lives in urban areas, a number predicted to grow to 60 percent by 2030.
Urban areas face unprecedented and growing challenges that endanger both human and ecosystem
health, such as: inner-city food deserts, health problems, and poverty; urban sprawl and inefficient
transport leading to chronic pollution problems; increased flooding, droughts, sea level rise, and severe
storms from climate change; and a lack of knowledge and technologies to address these complex
problems involving “systems of systems”.
Cities are recognizing that the increasing stream of data and
information (“Big Data”) (Figure 1) and modeling can support rapid
advances on these challenges. Cities are responding by investing in
improved technology infrastructure, but lack the culture of open
innovation and leading-edge technology that a university can provide.
The objective of UrbInSuRe is to partner university researchers with
city planners, policy makers, engineers, and others to address these
challenges using a transformative technology platform and
collaborative process. Specifically, UrbInSuRe will:
Figure 1: The “Big Data”
stream. Source: VentureBeat.com
1. Foster multi-disciplinary interaction and collaboration on urban challenges using data-driven
modeling and systems-based methods.
2. Provide shared resources (funds, space, staff, and cyberinfrastructure) to incentivize and
support collaborative urban research, education, and public engagement.
3. Support education and training needed for teams of faculty, staff, and students from multiple
disciplines, as well as their urban collaborators, to contribute to these activities.
4. Raise the national and international profile of data-driven urban research, education, and
engagement to enhance Illinois’ reputation and secure major external funding.
Initial Focus. The center will focus on
sustainable and resilient design of urban
infrastructure, defined in its broadest sense
to include transportation, water, food, and
other human systems that support cities.
Designing these systems to be sustainable
and resilient requires consideration of both
their mutual interconnections and their
interactions with energy, social, economic,
and environmental systems. Novel
methods for synthesizing data from the
Web and community partners, low-cost
sensing and robotics, and social computing
Figure 2: Data-driven synthesis, modeling, and
decision support.
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will be combined with data-driven modeling at multiple spatial and temporal scales to support adaptive,
information-based, and smart decisions (Figure 2).
We will create long-term partnerships with a diverse set of city partners across the world,
building opportunistically from existing collaborations. These collaborations could include Chicago,
working with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the College of Engineering’s UI Labs, and
Argonne’s Urban Center for Computation and Data; Champaign-Urbana; Chennai; Beijing; and 5 cities
(Phoenix, Portland, Baltimore, Chicago, and Durham) engaged in a national green infrastructure working
group funded by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC).
UrbInSuRe Activities. UrbInSuRe will create a lifecycle pipeline for multidisciplinary, data-driven projects
(Figure 3). The pipeline is an innovative model that combines successful elements of National Science
Foundation-funded synthesis centers, such as the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
(NCEAS) and SESYNC, with National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and Illinois
Information Institute (I3) technologies, programs, and expertise.
The pipeline will enable new ideas to emerge and coalesce in synthesis workshops and working
groups that bring together multi-disciplinary teams with external partners from industry, government
agencies, non-governmental organizations,
and academia. Working groups meet for
intensive retreats and collaborate remotely
between retreats, led by faculty and
supported by PhD fellows and staff. Each
working group will regularly share knowledge
and ideas with the other groups to ensure
cross-fertilization. Below are four proposed
working group topics and initial interested
faculty and staff (key gaps will be filled after
funding),1 along with a list of potential funding
Figure 3: Informatics and synthesis pipeline.
opportunities that could continue to support
these topics in the future:
1. Data-Driven Urban Informatics and Technologies (Co-Chairs: Jong Lee, NCSA, and Jana Diesner,
GSLIS; Initial participants: Jon Gant, GSLIS; Nora El-Gohary CEE and Joshua Peschel, CEE; Mei-Po
Kwan and Shaowen Wang, Geography; Scott Poole, Communications)

Grand Challenge: Big Data algorithms and cyberinfrastructure (CI) that provide insights on urban
grand challenges from heterogeneous data and models.

Research Questions: What methods and computational solutions can best address Big Data
challenges of variety, volume, and velocity, as well as spatiotemporal integration? How can
technology be used to better define, measure, and advance urban sustainability and resilience?
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Unit abbreviations are: ABE (Agricultural & Biological Engineering), ACE (Agricultural & Consumer Economics)
CEE (Civil & Environmental Engineering), GSLIS (Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences), INHS
(Illinois Natural History Survey), LA (Landscape Architecture), NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing
Applications), PRI (Prairie Research Institute), URP (Urban and Regional Planning), VetMed (Veterinary
Medicine).
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What types of visualizations of scientific findings would best enable informed decision making
by diverse stakeholders? What types and scales of computational models are most accurate in
predicting behavior of “systems of systems” in urban settings?

Funding Opportunities: National Science Foundation (NSF), Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Energy (DOE),
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Office of Naval Research (ONR), industry
2. Risk and Resilience of Coastal Cities (Co-Chairs: Gary Miller, PRI, and Paolo Gardoni, CEE; Initial
Participants: Barbara Minsker, CEE; Jesse Ribot and Ryan Sriver, Geography; Brian Anderson, INHS;
Arden Rowell, Law; and Colleen Murphy, Philosophy)

Grand Challenges: Reducing risks and increasing resilience to climate change (e.g., changes in
lake or sea levels, precipitation), natural and human-made disasters (e.g., Hurricane Katrina,
Fukoshima disaster, Gulf of Mexico oil spill), and rapid urban growth in coastal regions, where
half the world’s population resides and rapid growth is occurring. Risk is defined broadly to
include fatalities, economic impairment, damage to infrastructure and other critical services,
loss of biodiversity and cultural diversity, introduction of invasive species, impairment of human
health and wellbeing, and loss of outdoor recreational opportunity.

Research Questions: How can coastal risk mitigation measures be designed to optimize
economic, ecological, and societal outcomes, in both the short and long term? How can we
develop resilient strategies that evolve and adapt with changing risks, while catalyzing economic
activity and human and ecosystem wellbeing? How can coastal risks be assessed and effectively
and rapidly communicated? How do policies and governance affect risk mitigation and how can
barriers to effective management be overcome?

Funding Opportunities: NSF, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NASA, U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), insurance
companies, counties and municipalities, foundations
3. Rural and Urban Interfaces (Co-Chairs: Luis Rodriguez, ABE, and Anna-Maria Marshall, Sociology;
Initial Participants: Craig Gunderson, ACE; Daniel Work and Bill Buttlar, CEE; Sam Wortman, Crop
Sciences; Jong Lee, NCSA; Shaowen Wang, Geography; Brian Anderson, INHS; Jim Miller, NRES; Gary
Miller, PRI; Bev Wilson and Bumsoo Lee, URP)

Grand Challenges: Addressing chronic problems that bridge urban and rural areas, such as
pollution (e.g., hypoxia in regions downstream of urban areas), water resource conflicts, and
traffic congestion problems.

Research Questions: How can the costs of goods and services provided in urban centers reflect
the full environmental and social costs of production and delivery? What would be the impacts
of such an approach on urban and rural communities? What are the trade-offs between urban
pollutant sources (e.g., traffic and wastewater treatment emissions, urban runoff) versus rural
sources (e.g., agricultural runoff), and how would they be affected by a life cycle costing
approach?

Funding Opportunities: NSF, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA), state and regional government agencies, foundations
4. Healthy Urban Living: Improving Human and Ecosystem Wellbeing in the Urban Environment (CoChairs: Mei-Po Kwan, Geography, and Barbara Minsker, CEE; Initial participants: Craig Gunderson,
ACE; Nora El-Gohary, CEE; William Sullivan, LA; Scott Poole, Communications; Luis Rodriguez, ABE;
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Kate Williams, GSLIS; Jim Miller, NRES; Bev Wilson and Bumsoo Lee, URP; Julie Cidell, Geography;
Marilyn O’Hara, VetMed)

Grand Challenges: Identifying trends and causes, and evaluating solutions, to chronic human and
ecosystem health problems in urban areas (e.g., asthma, diabetes, obesity, loss of species
diversity and types).

Research Questions: What data, models, technologies, designs, strategies, or policies would
most effectively improve understanding and solution of complex human and ecosystem health
problems? What would a healthy, sustainable, and resilient city look like, and how can we
measure progress towards such a goal?

Funding Opportunities: NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES); EPA;
National Institutes of Health (NIH); NASA; state, local, and regional government agencies;
foundations.
The working groups will deploy a unique
synthesis structure proposed by the Water
Science Software Institute conceptualization
team (Figure 4) to advance both domain
research and informatics methods and
cyberinfrastructure. The groups would create
high-profile publications, new methods and
technologies, and new project proposals.
Workshops, working groups, and projects
will be supported by an advanced
cyberinfrastructure that will build from
existing technologies to create a state-ofFigure 4: Open community engagement process through synthesis
the-art community service platform and
working groups. Source: NSF Water Science Software Institute conceptualization
data/information from partner cities
team, 2011.
(Figure 5). The platform will support a
collaborative process for seamlessly
linking and sharing data acquisition and
analysis, models, and workflows
(sequences of analytical and modeling
steps), as shown in Figure 6. These tools
will be accessible through user-friendly,
yet computationally powerful, Web
applications for knowledge creation and
decision support. This framework will
Figure 5: Technology and city platform for informatics
support adaptive research and decision
research.
making to rapidly identify and advance
new data and technology needs. The platform will be made available to campus and external users for
open research, education, and engagement; users will be invited to contribute to advancing its
capabilities through an open-source community.
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Why Illinois? Given our significant
strengths in Big Data and expertise on
urban infrastructure, as well as
informatics and cyberinfrastructure
expertise, methods, and tools at NCSA
and other units across campus, Illinois
is uniquely positioned to take
advantage of the growing stream of
data from all sectors in advancing
progress on these societal grand
Figure 6: Cyberinfrastructure for urban Big Data
challenges, which involve all six of the
analytics and modeling.
Illinois Visioning Future Excellence
themes (energy and the environment, social equality and cultural understanding, economic
development, health and wellness, education, and information and technology). UrbInSuRe will provide
a model synthesis structure that could be expanded across campus in the future to enable Illinois
faculty, staff, and students to be world leaders in data-driven scholarship and public engagement.
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Quarte
r 2014
Tasks, Outcomes, and Timing
3
4
Quarter 2015
1
2
3
4
Quarter 2016
1
2
3
4
Quarter
2017
1
2
0: Select working group leadership and student fellows.
1: Refine center focus and research tasks.
1.1 Working groups’ membership finalized and kickoff workshop.
Outcomes: Updated white paper on center mission,
working group themes and research questions.
1.2: Literature review and detailed research task
scoping completed, including selection of testbed
cities, models, and informatics approaches.
Outcomes: Literature review, updated work plan.
2: Raise center profile and pursue external funding
opportunities.
2.1 Web site and marketing materials created.
Outcomes: Web site and brochure on center mission,
working group themes, personnel.
2.2 Initial visits to potential partner cities to explore
collaboration and funding opportunities.
2.3 Follow up on promising leads, prepare proposals.
Outcomes: At least 6 proposals per year.
4: Complete pilot research projects.
4.1 Urban data gathered and initial modeling and
analyses completed and reviewed at annual
workshop.
Outcomes: Presentation slides on initial findings,
updated work plan.
4.2 Modeling and analyses revised based on feedback.
Outcomes: Three conference papers.
4.3 Further modeling and analysis completed.
Outcomes: Three journal/conference papers.
4.4 Follow-on modeling and analyses completed.
Outcomes: Three journal/conference papers.
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