The university’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) is dedicated to the study of this burgeoning field. Sarah Williams, an assistant professor of urban design and director of MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab, emphasizes that Big Data gathered by cities is not limited to planning. “It is well-positioned to drive social change,” says Williams, who is affiliated with the institute, according to the article.
Carlo Ratti, director of the SENSEable City Lab in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Emilio Frazzoli, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, are exploring machine-to-machine technology. They envision autonomous vehicles that can communicate with each other, negating the need for traffic lights at intersections, the article says.
Researchers at the university, located near Boston, also are developing a smartphone app designed to incentivize sustainable transit choices. Users would collect points based on their travel habits, and could redeem those points for prizes. Read more on that here.
Read the full story here. This article originally appeared at Citiscope.org. Citiscope is a nonprofit news outlet that covers innovations in cities around the world. More at Citiscope. org.
