AccelNet-Design: A Global Network of Networks of Integrated Urban Services (GNNIUS) for Healthy and Smart Cities

Urbanization alters the forms and functions of a city, which can affect the atmosphere and hydrosphere locally and regionally, resulting in a city's unique urban climate. These changes can also interact with extreme weather and climate events, having a significant impact on the health and operation of multi-sectoral urban systems. With the advancement of smart sensor systems and computational power, researchers have been able to generate state variables for urban climates and systems research, which have demonstrated success in decision support for urban meteorological hazards. Despite this progress, there is still a lack of an urban analytics platform that provides coherent and standardized databases for urban climates and systems at appropriate spatiotemporal scales. This lack of an urban analytics platform impedes the generalization of urban climate research results across global cities and hinders the application of research outcomes to multi-sectoral urban systems. To address these challenges, this project aims to establish a global network of networks of integrated urban services (GNNIUS), bringing together scientific expertise and unique facilities and resources from different countries to address knowledge gaps in urban climate and systems research. GNNIUS will improve the inclusiveness and diversity of the next-generation researchers and will help advance fundamental science in urban climates and solve pressing societal problems with global and multi-disciplinary joint efforts. Through a series of guided discussions and a workshop, the international coordination of urban climates and systems researchers and stakeholders will establish guidelines for initiating an urban analytics platform and protocols for applying it to better deliver integrated urban services across global cities. This network of networks will initiate a general urban analytics platform currently missing in the urban research community that is needed to advance understanding of multi-scale processes, harness the new paradigm of sensors and models to address the most consequential knowledge gaps, and consider co-benefits/tradeoffs in multi-sectoral systems for decision-making support. GNNIUS will create (1) trans-disciplinary dialogues between domain experts (i.e., urban climates and systems) and technical experts (i.e., sensor networks, sensing and control, uncertainty quantification, and big-data science). (2) synergies among complementary observation, modeling and data analytics in distinct global cities. (3) a consensus to holistically evaluate strategies to achieve the desired objectives, such as urban climate mitigation and adaption strategies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.