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Josh Schacht

Josh Schacht is the director of technology and strategy at MetroLab Network. He works to support MetroLab members and the civic research community as a whole in promoting evidence-based policy and local community engagement. Prior to his role at MetroLab, Josh was a solutions architect on the Master Data Management team at Katerra, working to leverage sustainable building materials to create efficient and affordable housing.

While flood mitigation and resilience studies often focus on urban areas, researchers in Michigan are using sensors, machine learning and crowdsourcing to create disaster response tools for rural communities.
A New York City project seeks to improve the post-flood financial resiliency of low-income households with parametric insurance programs so disaster victims are paid quickly and can spend money where it’s needed most.
Part of the National Science Foundation's Civic Innovation Challenge, the Community Hub for Smart Mobility in Austin, Texas, aims to improve public transit options to underserved areas, broadening economic opportunity.
To look at how the pandemic affected the way people, particularly those in marginalized communities, interact with law enforcement, researchers analyzed arrest rates in U.S. cities pre- and post-lockdown.
A collaborative research project in Kansas City, Mo., uses sensors placed on buildings across diverse neighborhoods to monitor general air quality, as well as that in COVID-19 hotbeds, with publicly accessible data.
The EquiTensors project from the University of Washington takes the abundance of open data produced by government and transforms it so that not only is it useful, it's also equitable and promotes privacy.
Researchers from the Portland, Ore., metro area are collecting data on trees in urban environments to help predict the effects of climate change and resident health, particularly on underserved communities.
A partnership between Urban Spatial and a University of Pennsylvania professor aims to make it easier for city planners to gauge resident preference for preserving historic homes against need for higher-density housing.
A new report from Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research surveyed infrastructure projects in more than 100 major U.S. cities and argues these should be the starting place for federal strategy.