Skip to main content

Cornell University

GNNIUS

Global Network of Networks of Integrated Urban Services for Healthy and Smart Cities

Project Aims

Background and Motivation

Urbanization perturbs the local and regional atmosphere and hydrosphere, influencing urban climates and their interaction with extreme weather events under global climate change. These effects have implications for the health and functionality of urban systems. Advancements in computational power and sensor availability have revolutionized research on urban climates, enabling investigations into multi-physics processes at various scales. However, the integration of sensors and models within an urban data analytics platform (UDAP) to achieve desired health, resilience, and sustainability outcomes is still in its early stages. The UDAP intends to provide coherent and standardized databases that describe and analyze, at appropriate spatiotemporal scales, the state variables of urban climates and systems. Limitations in such a platform hinder the generalization of research results across global cities and the application of findings to multi-sectoral urban systems.

To address these challenges, a global network of networks of integrated urban services (GNNIUS) will act as a catalyst to integrate scientific expertise, unique facilities, and resources from national and international networks. The GNNIUS Workshop features discussions motivated by the five aims (See Fig. 1), which connect working groups formed among participants of individual networks.

Specifically, the GNNIUS Workshop envisions the future implementation of an UDAP such that:

  1. central to UDAP are the key state variables of urban climates and systems at appropriate spatiotemporal scales produced by the sensors, models, and their fusion
  2. by engaging end-users, an integral part of UDAP is to create an application portal for transdisciplinary research and to provide actionable decision-support services

Refer to the GNNIUS Aims heading for the alternative text description. Figure 1 Aims of the GNNIUS Workshop towards implementing the Urban Data Analytics Platform (UDAP) and description of the Working Groups (WG). Figure long description

Overarching Discussion Questions:

  1. What state variables at what spatiotemporal scales are needed to address the most consequential knowledge gaps? (Aims 1 and 2)
  2. How to leverage existing resources and what new resources are needed for the implementation of an Urban Data Analytics Platform (UDAP)? (Aim 3)
  3. How to design an application portal in the UDAP that facilitates the evaluation of the co-benefits and tradeoffs in different sectors of urban systems for different cities? (Aim 4)
  4. How to engage end-users for the implementation and design of the UDAP and the application portal? (Aim 5)