The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s smart city research center, the Center for Urban Informatics and Progress, and the City of Chattanooga’s Smart City Division within the Chattanooga Department of Transportation have received a Smart 50 award for the third year in a row. The Smart 50 awards aim to identify the 50 most influential smart city projects in the U.S. each year.
Smart city projects aim to make cities more livable by studying how traffic can be reduced, energy can be consumed efficiently, how crashes can be mitigated and more.
“This is a great honor,” Kevin Comstock, Smart City director for the city of Chattanooga, said.
“Designations like this are validation that the work we do is valuable and innovative.”
CUIP and CDOT’s collaboration with Hamilton County and the Chattanooga Smart Community Collaborative, “Chattanooga Regional Crash Prediction Model,” which predicts where roadway crashes will happen in the future based on historic 9-1-1 emergency call data, roadway geometrics and weather data, has won the award for a second time.
A collaboration with Seoul Robotics and Ouster Lidar, “Pedestrian Analysis Along The East M.L. King Boulevard Smart Corridor” won the award for the first time. The project aims to identify pedestrian and vehicle trends using LIDAR to mitigate near-miss incidents.
Both projects were funded through City Council action.
“I couldn’t be happier,” Dr. Mina Sartipi, director of CUIP, said. “So many wonderful projects were chosen, and to be listed among them is proof that great things are happening in Chattanooga.”