Saturday, April 23

Microsoft’s EcoPod (opens in new tab) is honored to be hosted by @BUILD (opens in new tab) Chicago for their Earth Day Event. Festivities start at 9am thru 1pm in Humboldt Park. Throughout the weekend, EcoPod and our Chicago groups will be on hand to share information about their organizations and efforts with residents.

Participants

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BUILD (opens in new tab) – Based on Chicago’s West Side, BUILD Chicago is a nationally respected organization focused on gang intervention, violence prevention, and youth development. We work to save lives and mentor young people who live in the city’s most challenged neighborhoods. Our services reach over 2,500 youth a year helping them build hope, resilience, and a path to a promising future.

Environmental Law and Policy (opens in new tab) (ELPC) – This organization plays a critical role advancing environmental solutions in Illinois, based out of our headquarters in Chicago. ELPC is accelerating renewable energy, retiring polluting coal plants, improving transportation, safeguarding clean water and air, and protecting wild places like the Savanna Sand Prairie and the Shawnee National Forest.

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MAPSCorps (opens in new tab) – This 501(c)(3) nonprofit based on Chicago’s Southside trains youth to produce high quality data about community assets that everyone will use to improve the human condition. High school students are employed as community data scientists, who apply scientific method and mobile technology to capture data about the public-facing businesses and organizations serving their community. MAPSCorps provides the first paid employment experience for half of participating youth.

Sunday, April 24

Microsoft’s EcoPod is excited to be featured @ThePlant (opens in new tab) for their Reuse-a-Palooza (opens in new tab) event. Doors open at 11 AM and will feature a variety of vendors, businesses, and sustainable organizations to help promote greener futures and show people how to recycle tricky items!

Participants

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Bubbly Dynamics (opens in new tab) – Bubbly Dynamics LLC is a social enterprise whose mission is to create replicable models for ecologically responsible and sustainable urban industrial development. The Plant, a project owned and operated by Bubbly Dynamics, is a research and production facility comprising a collaborative community of small food businesses.

Environmental Law and Policy (opens in new tab) (ELPC) – This organization plays a critical role advancing environmental solutions in Illinois, based out of our headquarters in Chicago. ELPC is accelerating renewable energy, retiring polluting coal plants, improving transportation, safeguarding clean water and air, and protecting wild places like the Savanna Sand Prairie and the Shawnee National Forest.

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Rheaply (opens in new tab) – The Rheaply Platform is a cloud-based resource exchange technology application for connecting people and organizations with resources to those who need them — improving reuse outcomes and catalyzing the circular economy. As the only market solution that combines an asset management system with an online marketplace, Rheaply’s platform enables organizations to exchange materials and resources more effectively, eliminating unnecessary waste and spend.

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Friday, May 13

Microsoft’s EcoPod (opens in new tab) is honored to be co-hosted by The DuSable Museum of African American History and Chicago Park District for Green City Day. Come join EcoPod and local Chicago organizations working across the environmental spectrum to address education, action, and community engagement for a greener future. Come taste award winning Mac & Cheese courtesy of Auntie Vee’s (opens in new tab) Food Truck (11am-2pm)

The DuSable Museum

The DuSable Museum of African American History (opens in new tab) is a Chicago community institution and the first non-profit Museum dedicated to the collection, documentation, preservation, study and the dissemination of the history and culture of Africans and African Americans. As an educational institution, DuSable attracts school groups from Chicago and surrounding areas. More than 100,000 visitors attend or utilize the facility yearly. Through exhibits, educational programs, the archives, and special activities, the Museum continuously explores the African American experience and accomplishments of the past and present to further advance the education of the future. DuSable is the host of the EcoPod and Green City Day.

Participants

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Blacks In Green (opens in new tab) (BIG) serves as a bridge and catalyst among communities and their stakeholders in the design and development of green, self-sustaining, mixed-income, walkable-villages in communities owned and populated by African Americans. In these places, every household can walk-to-work, walk-to-shop, walk-to-learn, walk-to-play, and neighbor dollars circulate to reduce greenhouse gases. Blacks In Green is pioneering “the sustainable-square-mile” in a “city of villages,” where every household can walk-to-work, walk-to-shop, walk-to-learn, and walk-to-play – balancing environment, economics, and equity. Our commitment is to self-sustaining Black communities everywhere.

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The Chicago Park District (opens in new tab) has over 8,800 acres of land, with over 600 parks. As of 2022, over 1,850 acres of Chicago Park District land is Natural Areas. There are over 90 Natural Areas ranging from a quarter acre to over 200 acres. Volunteers are an important part of Chicago Park District’s Natural Areas. Community Stewardship Program volunteers are dedicated community members that commit to leading volunteers at regularly scheduled workdays in a Natural Area. Community Stewards are valued partners that assist with the management, monitoring and advocacy of native habitats and serve as ambassadors to visitors. When volunteers, CPD staff and contractors work together, the quality of life for people and wildlife is richer. The program is managed in partnership with The Nature Conservancy.

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The Field Museum of Natural History (opens in new tab), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. One of the world’s leading natural history museums, the Field Museum is home to 40 million artifacts and specimens, exciting exhibitions, and more than 150 scientists, conservators, and collections staff. The Field Museum inspires curiosity about life on Earth while exploring how the world came to be and how we can make it a better place.

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Imani Village (opens in new tab) – As a Social Enterprise, develop for the empowerment of underserved and historically disenfranchised residents of the Pullman Community and the surrounding neighborhoods of Chicago, Illinois, a sustainable eco-friendly mixed use “green” intergenerational community with a village environment, committed to lifelong education, health and economic development to be known as Imani Village.

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MAPSCorps (opens in new tab) – This 501(c)(3) nonprofit based on Chicago’s Southside trains youth to produce high quality data about community assets that everyone will use to improve the human condition. High school students are employed as community data scientists, who apply scientific method and mobile technology to capture data about the public-facing businesses and organizations serving their community. MAPSCorps provides the first paid employment experience for half of participating youth.

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The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (opens in new tab) (MWRD) was created by the Illinois General Assembly in 1889 as the Sanitary District of Chicago to protect Lake Michigan, the source of our drinking water, as well as the health and safety of citizens and area waterways. We are an award-winning, special-purpose district responsible for treating wastewater and providing stormwater management for residents and businesses in our service area which encompasses 882.1 square miles and includes Chicago and 128 suburban communities throughout Cook County. The MWRD serves approximately 12.72 million people each day, including 5.16 million residents.

Nordson Green Earth Foundation (opens in new tab) was founded in 2021 to improve tree equity in and around Chicago. Incorporating the Miyawaki Method of tiny native forest planting, NGEF increases tree canopy while enhancing biodiversity in urban areas more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and heat islands. Through community engagement efforts, NGEF plans to create additional tiny native forests throughout the Chicagoland area in efforts to support the mission of tree equity.

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Discovery Partners Institute (opens in new tab) (DPI) envisions a tech workforce as diverse as Chicago and Illinois. Through Pritzker Tech Talent Labs (opens in new tab) (PTTL), a division within DPI, we are working systematically—from cradle to career—with elementary and high school students, college and community college students, teachers and working professionals to make our vision a reality. By creating a pipeline that bridges the college affordability gap and retains homegrown and diverse talent, we will have a network of programs and support that bring more people of color and women into tech spaces.

At the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation (opens in new tab), we study the fundamental processes that drive, shape, and sustain cities. Our researchers come from the social, natural, and computational sciences, along with the humanities. Together, we pursue innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship, develop new educational programs, and provide leadership and evidence to support global, sustainable urban development.

The Center for Spatial Data Science (opens in new tab) (CSDS) develops state-of-the-art methods for geospatial analysis; implements them through open-source software (opens in new tab) tools; applies them to policy-relevant research (opens in new tab) in the social sciences; and disseminates them through education (opens in new tab) and support to a growing worldwide community. Within CSDS, the HeRoP Lab (opens in new tab) further integrates innovative GIScience, public health, and statistical approaches to explore, understand, and promote healthy regions and policies.

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A) Hardware B) Assembly C) Calibration D) Installation E) Deployment and Engagement

The Urban Innovation group at Microsoft Research pursues state of the art science and technology development for urbanization. Lines of research focus on climate adaptation, health equity and environmental justice, ensuring equitable economic growth, and building strong, healthy communities.

The team recently deployed the Eclipse network, a city-scale IoT network for low-cost air quality monitoring.  A particular priority area is the incorporation of remote sensing data. We are thus particularly interested in candidates with experience in remote sensing or cross-training satellite-based models with ground-level measurement.

Must be currently enrolled in a PhD program in Computer Science or a related STEM field, a quantitative social science field (including urban planning), a quantitative public health field such as epidemiology or biostatistics, or environmental or atmospheric science.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with remote sensing data and analytics
• R or Python proficiency
• Experience with low-cost sensors and/or established interest in air pollution research
• Demonstrated ability to develop original research agendas
• Must be able to collaborate effectively with other researchers
• Excellent interpersonal skills, cross-group, and cross-culture collaboration
• Ability to think unconventionally to derive creative and innovative solutions

APPLY NOW!! (opens in new tab)Opens in a new tab

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Overview:  

Fireworks displays celebrating Independence Day are a mainstay in American culture. Yet, research shows fireworks lead to high levels of air pollution. For example, one study estimated July 4th celebrations produced a 42% increase in particulate matter nationwide. particulate matter can stay in the air for days or weeks, so poor air quality from fireworks can last long after festivities have ended. We also know that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is related to a host of poor health outcomes, including asthma-related outcomes, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, poor birth outcomes, and even premature death. 

Observation:

In Chicago, we deployed over 90 air quality sensors just before the 4th of July weekend. Our devices showed city-wide PM2.5 levels rising from “good” to “moderate” on July 4, and particulates lingered in the air for days. On July 7, average levels were still over double pre-holiday readings. Our network of hyperlocal low-cost air sensors also allows us to observe differences in air pollution levels across neighborhoods of Chicago. While our sensors are subject to some inaccuracies, they can help uncover the variability and behavior of pollution, adding new information to complement the data EPA collects with highly accurate but sparsely distributed stations. When we mapped our data, we saw lower levels in the north side on July 3, and noticeably higher levels in the south and southwest sides of Chicago that appear most pronounced on July 4 and 6.  

These differences in pollution track social and economic differences across neighborhoods. In Chicago, the second most segregated metro in the US, communities of color cluster on the west, south, southwest, and southeast sides. These are the same neighborhoods where we observe elevated air pollution exposures.  

Though public health researchers have declared residential segregation is “a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health” and have explicitly connected segregation to disparities in health via inequitable exposures air pollution, we still lack the tools needed to monitor exposures at the neighborhood scale – the scale at which inequities emerge. Project Eclipse, and sensor deployments like it, could enable urban public health departments to monitor hyperlocal outdoor air pollution exposure not just over 4th of July, but every day. 

Author: Precious Esie (Microsoft Research Intern)Opens in a new tab

The post How Fireworks Impact Air Quality appeared first on Microsoft Research.

The need is glaring: cities are frontline communities for the impacts of a changing climate. Many global cities sprang up around ports, building their economies on trade. Now, the majority of the world’s largest cities are at risk of sitting below sea level. The effects of increasingly frequent and extreme heatwaves are likely to be magnified in cities, the IPCC reports, by the urban heat island effect — the disproportionate heating of urban areas due to pavement and other heat-absorbing surfaces and a lack of vegetation. And the impacts of climate change on rural areas – droughts and bad harvests – ripple through urban areas as people are pushed to migrate, often arriving in informal settlements that are disproportionately vulnerable to heat, floods, and storms. In the absence of intervention, these climate-exacerbated events have the potential not only to cause harm to people–two-thirds of whom will live in cities by 2050–and to erode global wealth, which is disproportionately produced in cities, but also to exacerbate inequality.

For all their vulnerabilities, cities remain places of opportunity. When it comes to climate change mitigation, an initiative in a single city can have major impacts: In New York City, buildings account for an estimated two-thirds of all emissions; the City recently became the first to require efficiency upgrades of the 50,000+ buildings in the city that are over 25,000 square feet — a change expected to reduce the emissions by 10%. And a success in one city can easily be scaled elsewhere: globally, 23 cities have committed to a net zero buildings declaration; 34 cities have agreed to procure only zero-emissions buses; and 28 cities have pledged to move towards zero waste futures. For the major sources of emissions in cities – buildings, transportation, and waste – there are an increasing number of scalable solutions that urban leaders can easily adopt. Since the bulk of GHG emissions are attributable to cities – 70%, according to the United Nations – these commitments can have a major global impact.

Our group is developing technological solutions for cities because cities are where the majority of humans live and work. Cities are where most people will experience the effects of a changing climate, and where there is the most potential to reduce emissions quickly. There’s one more reason to focus on developing new technologies in urban spaces: cities are laboratories of democracy. Cities are places where innovations can get immediate feedback from residents, and where no innovation can be successful without the buy-in of residents. While that’s a high barrier to clear, it’s also increasingly clear that social and political buy-in is among the most important need for anyone working to address climate change. If we wish to solve big problems, we need to be able to build broad and multifaceted collaborations – and our team has found extraordinary partners in the cities in which we have begun to work.

There is no simple, technological solution that will give us back a pre-carbonized world. There are only assemblages of numerous small solutions, promoted by political leaders and adopted and implemented by communities, that – together – will produce measurable improvements. By working not just in cities, but with cities, we can co-develop the social and political structures needed to ensure that our technological solutions work, and work for everyone.

Author: Madeleine Daepp (Urban Planner/Senior Researcher)

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The post When focusing on climate change, why focus on cities? appeared first on Microsoft Research.

istock Photo (air quality/fire/smoke)

Currently humans on the planet have very little information about the quality of the air that they breathe as they move through their daily lives. In 2019 the UN Secretary-General estimated that polluted air is responsible for an estimated 7 million deaths per year world-wide, building on earlier research showing vehicle emissions to be responsible for ~200,000 early deaths in the US alone (Caiazzo et al.1). We focus this document on making the case that cities should provide Clean Air as a service and that air quality data is an essential element of managing this essential resource.

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Urban Futures Workshop 2020Opens in a new tab

The post Science of Air Quality appeared first on Microsoft Research.

Aerial View of People Social Distancing at the park

The COVID-19 pandemic has stress-tested cities in ways nearly unimaginable, from shuttering retail to depleting crucial tax revenues that will cripple public service provision for years to come, to fundamentally disrupting the concept of commuting for millions of people. In this paper, we discuss ways cities can leverage this period to increase their ability to “flex,” meaning to adapt in the face of adversity and to building back stronger. Such lessons and potential transformations will serve as a “trial run” for the impending and almost certainly much larger impacts of climate change.

We apply these assessments and recommended learnings to a case study of housing. With an imminent eviction crisis due to widespread inability to pay rent, the timescale for innovative housing solutions has become immediate. Potential solutions include repurposing existing buildings, innovations in the construction and licensing of new housing, and revised transit scheduling. Ultimately these strategies can help mitigate housing issues stemming from climate migration, homelessness, and the need for urban density in light of expected urban population growth. Their common thread is a more intelligent assessment of resource allocation based on novel data and forecasting techniques.

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Urban Futures Workshop 2020Opens in a new tab

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Process 

The Urban Innovation team uses an Engage – Sense – Build cycle. This approach starts by getting engaged with local city government, civic tech, and community members to learn about the challenges they face in order to build solutions to real problems. The aim is to incorporate technology into environments that is seamless, relevant, and accessible to all.  

MSR Urban Innovation research and deployment process

Next, sensing technology is developed and embedded in the built environment, with the aim of providing relevant information to residents and policy makers, in a way that maintains rigorous privacy standards. Data from sensing platforms then drives cloud-based services that power data dashboards, advanced analytics for policy and resource allocation decision making, an ecosystem of mobile and web experiences for residents, and development of novel hardware.  

The cycle continues by reengaging the community to deploy new and evolve existing technology solutions. Ultimately, the goal for the process is to enable responsive, dynamic urban infrastructure (sense + build) that informs residents and policy makers (engage) toward advancing environmental, economic, and equity goals. 

Research Agenda 

Toward those ends, the Urban Innovation team seeks to do original research and technology development in three umbrella areas: environmental impact, economic development, and equity.  

MSR Urban Innovation research agenda: main areas and example domains and projects.

These three areas are interrelated, and consequently an initial keystone project for Urban Innovation is on air quality sensing (see Project Eclipse (opens in new tab)), which brings together environmental sensing, public health modeling, and sustainable development and environmental justice. As examples, other projects focus on migration, housing, and water quality.  

Multidisciplinary 

Cities are complex organisms, requiring holistic, multidisciplinary thinking. Urban Innovation at MSR brings together expertise in the following areas: electrical engineering, hardware design, user experience and design, social science, public health, urban science, software and data engineering, and industrial design. This mix of skillsets is leveraged to build solutions that can, for instance, collect data with low level electrochemical environmental sensing, engage communities through mobile and other user experiences built on that data, and inform policy makers through data science. Urban Innovation also partners with academic colleagues across a range of disciplines. 

Contact 

If you are interested in partnership opportunities with the MSR Urban Innovation team, please contact urbantec@microsoft.com (opens in new tab). You can follow us on Twitter @MsrUrban (opens in new tab). Opens in a new tab

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