Team 4 - ISM Saratoga Springs Smart Cities - Final Report

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Lally School of Management Saratoga Springs Smart City Initiative Information Systems for Management Jonathan Matla, Paul Meyer, Jingxuan Lu, Hardeep

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Lally School of Management

Saratoga Springs

Smart City Initiative Information Systems for Management

Jonathan Matla, Paul Meyer, Jingxuan Lu, Hardeep Singh, and He Wang 4-26-2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary 2

Introduction 3

Methodology 3

The City of Ithaca, NY 4

The City of Kansas City, MO 5

The City of Tacoma, WA 6

The City of Pittsburgh, PA 7

The City of Seattle, WA 8

Conclusion 9

Acknowledgements 10

References 11

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As technology advances and populations continue to become more concentrated in metropolitan areas, cities continue to stretch the boundaries of their physical and technological infrastructure Cities that we built hundreds of years ago were not developed to have infrastructure able to accommodate the high level of inhabitance and ever changing technology that bring unforeseen needs Today, these cities are at an inflection point in their history where they must adapt to the ever-changing technological advances or continue to experience difficulty through limited resources and space Throughout our research in evaluating five different smart city initiatives, we determined that challenges such as transportation, education, and increasing environmental emissions are problems that each city with growing population will experience The ever-growing demand for change starts with making a decision on where and how to implement these solutions Considering Saratoga has similar problems, with their own unique specifics we, believe that leveraging resources in the capital region along with benchmarking other smart city progress will help further Saratoga’s smart city roadmap

INTRODUCTION

Smart Cities are defined as “an urban development vision to integrate information, communication, and technology in a stable manner to manage a city’s assets” Based on our interpretation, a city’s assets include infrastructure, businesses, and citizens

We started our focus by researching other smart city initiatives that have been implemented or are currently being implemented These initiatives have useful comparative information that the city of Saratoga can leverage to further their smart city road map We developed a similarity framework and used it to pick five different cities for our study: Kansas City, MO, Ithaca, NY, Pittsburgh, PA, Seattle, WA, and Tacoma, WA Each of these cities presented a unique perspective based on location, population, and individual needs for us to use as a benchmark when helping craft our recommendation for Saratoga’s Smart City Initiative

Note that this documentation summarizes our team’s brief exploration into the vast domains of Smart Cities during the timeframe of March 2017 – April 2017

METHODOLOGY

We first referred to a list of 100 U.S smart cities and divided 20 cities amongst each student to investigate After this, we followed a two-step methodology to extract the five cities for this list

In Step 1, we devised a similarity framework which compared different smart cities to Saratoga The framework utilized factors like population, number of households, median income, and land area An overall Z score for key performance indicators was defined representing how similar the city under investigation is to Saratoga The city with the lowest Z score or in other words, most similar city, was picked first for further review in the second step

Fig: Smart City Similarity Framework - Ithaca Step 2 was a manual comparison of each city’s Smart City goals with Saratoga’s domain area goals If the city’s goals had a good match with Saratoga’s goals, it was chosen Otherwise, the next best city from the similarity framework was reviewed Please note that while finalizing the five cities we eventually picked for this project, a higher preference was given to Step 2 (i.e similarity of domain area goals was prioritized)

THE CITY OF ITHACA, NY

Ithaca is a city located in the Southern Tier-Finger Lakes region of NY The city views its “comprehensive plan” as “a vision for the future and a blueprint for change” which helps in improving physical and infrastructural growth, as well as enhancing the quality of “life elements”, such as parks, neighborhoods and social equity

OBJECTIVE

Ithaca’s section on Decreasing Greenhouse Gas Emissions closely resembles the CSC (Climate Smart Communities) pledge Saratoga has taken as part of its Environmental Innovation domain Ithaca aims to be a carbon-neural city by reducing emissions by 80% of the 2010 level by 2050

PLAN OF ACTION

Maintaining a greenhouse gas emissions inventory enables decision makers to create strategies for emission reductions and also helps policy makers in tracking the progress of these strategies Currently Ithaca uses state and international benchmarks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which also considers the anticipated future energy consumption rate before defining its reduction target Developing the plan required analyzing past trends, present conditions, and future projections Although the plan is primarily based on energy consumption data, others factors like land use policies, transportation trends, economic considerations etc., are also vital Ithaca listed two primary goals for their plan; Achieving the reduction target and encouraging entities, such as businesses and organizations, to assist in reducing greenhouse gas emissions Ithaca also identified four key action items to achieve

their goals, which are; Adopting the Local Action Plan: Local government should support the implementation of strategies and should be willing to commit necessary resources; Develop a Combined Committee: Citizens and Businesses should work together to propose, modify, publicize, and monitor changes; Collaborate with regional

stakeholders: Ithaca involved Tompkins County Government, Cornell University, and Ithaca college to leverage their

resources; Monitor and report: The plan should be a living document that can be modified as need be based on

changing environmental regulations

IMPLICATIONS FOR SAR ATOGA

Saratoga could partner with local businesses and universities to leverage resources for data collection and implementation These resources can not only provide insight but also help to make coming up with solutions quicker and easier Devoting time to collecting and examining data, such as updating greenhouse gas inventory every two

to three years, can help to track progress and prepare for future projects

KEY TAKEWAYS FOR SARATOGA

Due to the possibility that there can be glitches in the greenhouse gas inventory data, the Saratoga Smart City implementation team may want to use the data for reference purposes only Additionally, since the data gathering process is dynamic, reviewing the proposed strategies annually can help the collecting efforts to run smoothly and efficiently

THE CITY OF KANSAS CITY, MO

Kansas City, MO is considered to be the world’s most connected smart city Their original initial plan utilizes

a two-mile smart city corridor in order to make a new experience for those who work, live, and hang out in Kansas City through data visualization Taking advantage of the free, open, and optimized transportation system and entertainment services makes life easy and enable residents and tourists to spend more time living life

OBJECTIVE

To expand on their smart city, Kansas City, MO is looking to grow their 2.2-mile smart street corridor to 10 miles improving the daily life of residents and tourists

PLAN OF ACTION

Kansas City’s current pride and joy is their free smart streetcar, which when combined with data visualization, citizens have access to the locations and times of the streetcar as well as reverse alerts in case of delays

or emergencies Additionally, this data utilization system helps citizens to find parking, indicate traffic flow, and show pedestrian hotspots To support this initiative, Kansas City has placed interactive kiosks located throughout the Smart corridor in addition to an online web portal, called xaqt These interactive kiosk and online portal help to collect and store data that helps to further optimize the city around citizen behavior patterns

To enhance the experience of both residents and tourists, Kansas City utilizes methods to better connect the community The end result of connecting the community is enhancing the local economy while attracting entrepreneurs to work on future initiatives Kansas City’s main method of supporting this initiative is also through data visualization and data collection Much like the transportation method, this initiative also takes advantage of the interactive kiosks and the online portal With these tools, people can access different transportation methods, city services, and entertainment options To further advance optimization, Kansas City has also installed smart streetlights and sensors which helps to promote safety and reduce energy costs The only difference here is that data gathering is done through cameras built within the streetlamps as a tally system

IMPLICATIONS FOR SAR ATOGA

Having a main method of collecting data from residents and tourists (through online portals and kiosks) allows the city to adapt in real time as events occur This has huge implications for Saratoga’s traffic signal replacement and taxi - parking app development Being able to collect data will help Saratoga to optimize roads and streets which will improve the daily lives of residents and tourists Overall, this initiative stresses the importance of big data, having access to what people are doing in the Kansas City region allows the city to figure out future initiatives to better improve the community and help to promote business growth Looking at the city of Saratoga, the methods and importance of data collection can help with their Public Access Community Organization initiative Having the community and city know the behaviors and trends of its citizens can help to optimize how the city of Saratoga gets the community involved in improve the city

KEY TAKEAWAYS

To avoid missteps and build on past success, we would recommend Saratoga to start small which will allow the city to see if a project will be a success and help tackle big issues before moving on to minor problems Saratoga

can learn from this by implementing new ideas as a pilot test which will lead to more successes in the future when expanding on innovative initiatives

When looking at the overall big picture, it is also important to understand that big data is vital to the success

of Smart City initiatives Without it, you cannot improve or optimize what it you are trying to accomplish Saratoga can learn from this by prioritizing data gathering as a primer step before implementing any new ideas

THE CITY OF TACOMA, WA

Tacoma is a medium-size city in Washington It is the center of business activity of the South Sound region and inhabits around 1 million people Recently, this city has committed to build implement a smart city imitative with the help of local information technology Currently, Tacoma has successful implemented a smart school which is its greatest achievement thus far

OBJECTIVE

The goal for Tacoma is to use Microsoft cloud services to analyze student data to identify the students endanger of failing which will help raise the high school graduation rate Similarly, Saratoga Springs also inhabits a large amount of the businesses in the capital region, which directly leads to higher grade school enrollments Saratoga Springs is also working on building smart and can use Tacoma to provide a blueprint for implementation

PLAN OF ACTION

The district administrators built a predictive analysis model based on Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning technology to analyze student data The data was collected and separated by demographic, academic, and performance measures These performance measures include students’ grades, class attendance, health information, and data on student’s extracurricular activities Analyzing this historical data, will allow teachers and administrators to know past behaviors and learning patterns of the students, in addition to identifying the students with learning difficulties

IMPLICATIONS FOR SARATOGA

The access to cloud data gives Saratoga the resources to support student learning and the success of Tacoma provides a framework for Saratoga to follow in terms of discovering unique trends that may hinder learning for Saratoga’s grade school students

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR SARATOGA

Saratoga Springs can use cloud services to build predictive models, analyze historical data, discover learning patterns for students, and help students in danger of failing Before using the methods discussed only 55% of high school students earned their high school diplomas in 2010, which was lower than the national average of 81% In

2014, the graduation rate has risen to 78% which proves the effectiveness Using this example, Saratoga can continue

to build upon their current initiative to increase the rate of learning in grad schools

THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH, PA

The City of Pittsburgh has a relatively larger population size compared to Saratoga’s and has a longer history

of upgrading and improving its transportation systems utilizing information technology Among all the cities we did research on, Pittsburgh stands out with its in depth and extensive implementation of big data techniques in the transportation domain Pittsburgh’s smart city initiative focused mainly on installing real time adaptive signal control systems and intelligent sensors and employing advanced big data techniques to develop a robust multi-modal travel and accident reporting application This application supports dynamic parking management, customized travel route creation which is in line with Saratoga’s smart city domain for smarter travel

OBJECTIVE

Pittsburgh is building a comprehensive transportation information platform incorporating processes of information collection, data analytics, and output information

PLAN OF ACTION

Pittsburgh is currently installing Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) sensors in fixed and on mobile locations, such as traffic signals, power lines, and busses in order to collect real-time traffic data, and also pulling social media contents from smartphone users related to transportation topics To analyze the data gathered, Pittsburgh is partnering with the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University to build a data analytics center, and using advanced data mining as well as machine learning techniques to extract valuable insights regarding traffic flow and parking management Pittsburgh will also partner with Carnegie Mellon University’s school of computer science to develop a multi-modal and accident reporting smartphone application This app will let users customize their traffic routes taking into consideration of predicted travel time, travel time reliability, parking, travel cost, safety, health and landscape Besides, with the real time traffic data, the effect of dynamic parking policy can

be evaluated and adjusted accordingly to better smooth traffic flow in peak hours

IMPLICATIONS FOR SAR ATOGA:

According to Saratoga’s smart city roadmap, Saratoga has already started the implementation of traffic signal replacement and taxi - parking app development There is huge potential in Saratoga’s development, and Saratoga could partner with local academic institutions and enterprises to develop an integrated transportation information system by reviewing their current data infrastructure This can enable Saratoga to fully exploit real-time traffic data and social media information to develop a user customized travel app which could be helpful for both the citizens and tourists of Saratoga

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR SARATOGA:

Saratoga can better optimize their current data analytics infrastructure by partnering with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and SUNY Albany’s computer science and engineering departments This would allow Saratoga

to have an automated, connected, and smarter traffic network The data acquired would also be beneficial to future research and entrepreneurship potential

THE CITY OF SEATTLE, WA

In 2015 Seattle was named the fastest growing major city in the US due to its explosive economic growth With explosive growth come unforeseen problems, such as traffic congestion where most parts had all day gridlock which caused Seattle to become a victim of its own growth In early 2017 Seattle applied for, and won, a Smart City grant through the White House Due to Seattle’s population of 608,660, with a density of 17 persons/acre, transportation became a major problem Comparatively, Saratoga also faces traffic issues during the summer due to the Saratoga Race Course and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center; not to mention daily rush hour traffic year-round

OBJECTIVE

Focusing on transportation, as soon as the challenge was won, the city of Seattle had a newfound feeling

of adaptiveness and resilience They had now started to enable the collective power of millions of smart decisions, made by the same citizens, taxpayers, and companies who were depending on the outcomes for their everyday lives Their first endeavor was the Mobility Marketplace, which was defined as “a powerful data platform that consolidates and optimizes all transportation modes in a single environment” Through the Mobility Market place, users of all income levels will be able to identify the fastest and most affordable way to get to their destination in that particular moment, using the optimal combination of public and private transportation modes

PLAN OF ACTION

Seattle will be installing sensors and communication systems to collect real-time data about the

transportation ecosystem which includes busses, trains, traffic signals, street lights, and parking spaces Once

collected, Seattle will use data analytics to process, manage, and distribute the refined data The data will be held

by a disinterested third party and will be properly encrypted and adhere to all federal and state laws The Mobility

Marketplace will use the to securely distribute data to develop a transportation application for end users Priority is placed on pushing timely information, incentivizing behavior, and providing a seamless, multimodal payment

mechanism As travel behavior changes, services will need to be optimized For example, Seattle can immediately

determine which traffic signals need to be retimed all without needing to collect additional data This methodology can be applied to any part of the transportation system

IMPLICATIONS FOR S ARATOGA

Saratoga currently faces similar issues with traffic during daily rush hour and peak tourist season during the summer months Saratoga could leverage the data collection methods that Seattle uses to similarly develop an efficient smart city transportation system for tourists and residents

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR SARATOGA

Our recommendation based on Seattle’s initiative is to use this as a blueprint towards improving Saratoga traffic Through partnering with a local university such as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and SUNY Albany, Saratoga will have the resources for taking the raw data, analyzing, and interpreting it so that it can be refined in usable form The city-university connection could also help develop the Saratoga GO! application

CONCLUSION

After reviewing the various Smart City initiatives and comparing and contrasting their methods we have developed a plan on action we believe significantly advances Saratoga’s smart city initiative Our recommendation has three main areas, transportation, education, and emissions reduction

From a high-level perspective, Saratoga may benefit from continuing city-university relations within the capital district to leverage the resources of student intellect By doing so, information technology and computer science students could help progress the initiatives set forth by Saratoga including methods for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting big data To ease into these initiatives, Saratoga may want to start small which would help to mitigate risk and focus resources to achieve success Once project milestones have been reached, Saratoga can invest greater resources into expanding initiatives utilizing the previous success Additionally, Saratoga can use past and current smart city projects as a benchmark or as lessons learned