Chicago, the city that works, will be the test subject in an experiment to create the city that works better.
Microsoft, Accenture, Commonwealth Edison and Siemens are partnering with the city of Chicago to figure out how technology can help design and operate more efficient cities. The effort, called CityWorks, is the second major program for UI Labs, a Chicago-based research consortium between top universities and companies across the Midwest.
Launched two years ago, UI Labs is best known for its first project, a federally funded effort to develop next-generation manufacturing technology called the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute.
CityWorks will bring the Internet of Things to bear on cities, from infrastructure to energy management. The aim is to turn loose researchers from universities and companies to use Chicago as a giant laboratory to gather data and develop new technologies. Widespread Internet connectivity, smartphones and cheap sensors attached to cars, roads, buildings and people already are providing massive amounts of data.
Chicago is vying to maintain its dominance in architecture, engineering and urban planning into an increasingly digital future. Technology companies including Microsoft, IBM, Cisco Systems and Siemens have been dabbling in aspects of what's loosely described as “smart cities.” And cities such as Berlin, London, Singapore, Toronto, Tokyo and San Jose, Calif., have been praised for individual advances in areas such as transportation or climate.
“No one has claimed the mantle of digital planning,” says John Tolva, the city's former chief technology officer who now is president of Positiv¬Energy Practice, a consulting firm involved in smart building and city design. “Chicago's long history of architectural and structural innovation is based on technology. . . .If this succeeds, we'll be the place other cities and countries come to learn (from).”
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CHICAGO AS TEST SUBJECT
Microsoft picked Chicago as the first of several communities where it will invest in the Internet of Things to figure out “how is tech going to live and breathe in the fabric of big metropolitan areas?” says Dan'l Lewin, Mountain View, Calif.-based vice president for technology and civic engagement.
Unlike the digital-manufacturing lab, which received $80 million in federal funding, CityWorks will be privately funded. Lewin declines to discuss the terms of Microsoft's commitment, and Caralynn Nowinski, executive director of UI Labs, declines to disclose the budget.
The project traces back to a conversation between Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel during a visit to Chicago by Ballmer.
“We decided this would be a great place to put a bet on the table—a working model,” Lewin says. “Chicago presented strong leadership and an incredible infrastructure opportunity. New York is the biggest city, but it's five boroughs and the geography is spread out. Los Angeles is also spread out.”
Microsoft and the other partners will draw on deep technology and infrastructure resources—and strong ties to Chicago. The software maker has 550 employees in the city. Siemens' building technologies division is based in Buffalo Grove. Chicago long has been a hub for Accenture's consulting and technology teams. Chicago-based ComEd increasingly is using technologies such as Internet-connected meters and drones to improve and maintain its infrastructure.
They'll pair up with local universities that have research institutes focused on transportation, architecture, engineering, urban planning, energy management, computation and data analysis.
The other ingredient is a city that has emerged as a leader in using data to deliver services such as public transit, policing and pest control. It also took the lead in making data available to technologists who regularly host hackathons to develop apps to track buses, sewage overflows or car crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists.
Like the digital-manufacturing institute, CityWorks will be housed at UI Labs' headquarters on Goose Island, set to open later this spring. Specific CityWorks research programs haven't been decided, but proposals are underway and should be selected by year-end.
Because the labs draw heavily on private companies and research universities as partners, they won't generate a lot of new jobs or new facilities. “There will be some dedicated staff. It's not about building up internal capability with 1,000 scientists,” Nowinski says. “But with our partners, we'll have 1,000 scientists working on our projects.”
The long-term goal of UI Labs is to have five or six programs in various industries, such as agriculture and food safety, where the Midwest has academic expertise and corporate partners. The idea is to spark collaboration between the state's universities and companies to turn basic research into new commercial technology and companies, replicating some of the success seen in Silicon Valley and Boston. So far, that success has proved elusive for Chicago and other parts of the country.
“Is this going to be the right formula? We're about to find out,” says Robert Rosner, a physicist at the University of Chicago and former director of Argonne National Laboratory. “Everybody understands what we're doing is an experiment.”
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