Browsing by Subject "Smart city"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Optimizing allocation of electric vehicle charging stations in the city of Austin
(2017-08) Patel, Akik Bharat; Paterson, Robert G.; McDougall, Lindsey
In 2011, the U.S. Presidential Administration set the goal of having a million electric vehicles in the U.S. by 2015. In order to support these goals, the U.S federal government introduced several incentive programs (includes purchasing tax credits) and policies (installing public charging stations) to encourage EV adoption and ease dependence on gasoline consumption. Since the introduction of these policies and mass-marketing of EVs in 2010-11, the sale of commercial electric vehicles in the U.S between 2011 and 2015 has been more than 300,000. However, EVs accounts for less than 1 percent of total light-duty vehicles sales. One of the reasons for the low adoption rate for EV is “range anxiety”. This is created among consumers due to lack of publicly available charging infrastructure and this prohibits users to travel between and within cities. Thus, in order to promote EVs as a primary vehicle for drivers, more charging stations should be made available to the public. The main objective of this research is to identify suitable locations for installing public Electric Vehicle charging stations in the City of Austin. At present, Austin Energy doesn’t have any standard method to identify demand for public charging stations and locate them appropriately to optimize its usage. In order to determine land parcel suitable for installing public charging stations, a set of geo-spatial data were identified from an extensive review of existing literature and similar studies conducted across the globe. These data sets were then edited to form individual raster layers. Each raster data is further classified by assigning scores to each raster value (within a raster layer) based on simple logic. For example, a higher score will be assigned to a raster cell which is closer to a Food establishment and a lower score as we move further away. The higher score basically defines a higher suitability of installing a charging station and vice versa. Further, a map indicating the optimal parcels in the city for installing EV charging infrastructure is created using map algebra which is based on assigning different weighting factors to each raster layer.
Smart city in a box : a strategic playbook for igniting civic innovation
(2017-05-05) Chin, Kristie; Walton, C. Michael; Row, Shelley; Zhang, Zhanmin; Machemehl, Randy; Greenberg, Sherri
The smart city landscape is a complex and dynamic space. In a rapidly changing environment, transportation leaders are in need of a way to readily identify local mobility challenges, narrow in on the solutions that will maximize prospects for success, and connect with peer cities to advance an agenda of collective action. Building upon the experiences of the USDOT Smart City Challenge, the proposed Smart City Playbook represents an advance in the mobility conceptualization of smart cities. Using clustering as a means for organizing cities along multiple dimensions, the Playbook composes a selected landscape of 36 cities into four dominant clusters – Reimagining Cities, Dense & Dynamic Cities, Renaissance Cities, and College Towns – each comprised of different combinations of micro-foundations. The clusters facilitate development of solutions among analogous cities, while the micro-foundations provide insight into a city’s unique character and indicate places in other cities that are experiencing similar conditions. Driven by the analysis, the Playbook outlines a systematic framework for generating use cases and proposes short-listed solution sets for each of the four clusters. Together cities have the power to leverage their talent, expertise, and solutions to shape the evolving marketplace and direct investment towards the communities most in need.
The smart city : a rhetorical analysis of actors and their smart city narratives
(2016-12) Russell, Patrick James; Young, Robert F., Ph. D.; Moore, Steven A., 1945-
This thesis introduces and synthesizes the rhetorical narratives of smart cities—a burgeoning field of discourse and practice that adds another “layer” of infrastructure to urban form and function: information and communication technology (ICT). In this thesis, I will perform a rhetorical analysis of two primary actors involved in the smart city movement: corporate actors and academic observers. Rhetoric is discourse, and discourse wields power. Only by observing the multi-faceted rhetoric of the smart city’s arrival and development will we, first, come to lay bare what exactly is happening, and second, better direct and guide technological interventions in urban spaces towards goals that serve the greater good. Technology alone will not define the future; rather, urban futures will be determined by how competing social groups within heterogeneous societies and economies approach, embrace, and speak of the technology that increasingly defines urban form.
When robotaxis roamed : a critical analysis of cross-sector information sharing practices in the case of Cruise in Austin
(2024-05) Kasper, Juliana ; Acker, Amelia; Min Kyung Lee
For most of 2023, the autonomous vehicle start-up Cruise tested and deployed its self-driving cars in several central and downtown neighborhoods in Austin, Texas. The case of Cruise in Austin is now an international benchmark for the burgeoning debate about the possibility of large-scale autonomous vehicle deployment. This report aims to understand how Cruise engaged in cross-sector information sharing practices with public-sector actors in Austin in the context of this ‘smart city’ experiment. To do this, I submitted fourteen public information requests to various departments at the City of Austin (COA) to collect a corpus of public records (n=300), and the majority of the records were emails (n=234). A thematic analysis identified overarching themes in Cruise’s information sharing practices with public sector actors in Austin. The themes found include “Strained and Ad-Hoc Systems,” “Citizen Engagement,” “Crisis Management,” “Trust Building,” and “Risk Mitigation through Avoidance.” The findings indicate that although Cruise entered into a voluntary information sharing partnership with COA, Cruise stakeholders engaged in bad-faith information-sharing practices. These practices were characterized by strategic obfuscation and defensive posturing. Overall, Cruise’s approach to information sharing strained systems and prevented sustained, long-term trust from being built with public sector actors.