• Conferenece Chicago at University Center (map)
  • 525 South State Street
  • Chicago, Illinois 60605
  • United State of America

Organized by the Smart Grid Observer, the 3rd Annual Smart Cities International Symposium & Exhibition, January 22-24, 2019 in Chicago brings together thought leaders and practitioners from around the world to explore the most recent technology advances, business models, and lessons learned to date in making the Smart City a reality. Expert speakers will examine the experiences of municipal governments who are pushing the envelope and moving toward actual implementation of the Smart City vision. The emphasis is on implementation strategy, case studies, best practices, and the development of compelling business models for transitioning to the 21st Century Smart City.

The Array of Things and the Future of the Smart City

Wednesday, January 23, 2019 | 1:30 - 2:30 pm

This session examines Chicago's Array of Things project, which is a unique platform in several aspects for testing smart infrastructure in a real city. First, as a sensor network it is the most comprehensive in that it measures 20 different factors (not including image and sound processing, such as traffic and pedestrian flow), and it is further unique in that the data is not tucked away behind a proprietary portal, but made open and free.

Second, the way the open source hardware/software platform has been designed and deployed in 100-unit bursts at six month intervals, allows sensor developers to test their sensors at scale across the city, partnering with Argonne National Lab, the University of Chicago, and the City of Chicago.

Third, and the clearest delineator, is that the devices contain computational capabilities and are remotely programmable. That means a city-wide testbed has been created for groups doing "edge computing" (computing inside the device, not sending data to a cloud to be analyzed), at the moment predominantly focused on analyzing the images and sound.

Speakers

Charlie Catlett, Director, Urban Center for Computation and Data
Charlie Catlett is the founding director of the Urban Center for Computation and Data, UrbanCCD, which brings social, physical, and computational scientists together with artists, architects, technologists, and policy makers to explore science-based approaches to opportunities and challenges related to the understanding, design, and sustainable operation of cities. To this end UrbanCCD brings expertise, tools, and resources to bear from computational modeling, data analytics, and embedded systems. He is also a Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.

From 2007 to 2011 Charlie was the Chief Information Officer at Argonne National Laboratory, and from 2004 to 2007 he was Director of the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid initiative - a nationally distributed supercomputing facility involving fifteen universities and federal laboratories. From 1999 to 2004 Charlie directed the design and deployment of I-WIRE, a dedicated fiber optic network funded by the State of Illinois, which connects research institutions in the Chicago area and downstate Illinois to support advanced research and education. Before joining the University of Chicago and Argonne in 2000, Charlie was Chief Technology Officer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Danielle DuMerer, CIO & Commissioner, Department of Innovation & Technology, City of Chicago

Danielle is CIO and Commissioner of the City of Chicago's Department of Innovation and Technology, where she is working to improve how residents interact with government and leading its smart city initiatives. She brings over ten years of government technology experience, having most recently served as CTO. Prior to working in government, Danielle developed K-12 educational technology products at the McGraw-Hill Companies. She also worked in the Library and Archives field, serving a variety of educational and non-profit organizations to promote equitable access to and preservation of information resources. Danielle holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Maryland, College Park and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.