Communications of the ACM
Is the City of the Future Finally Here?
Computing pioneer and big data visionary Charlie Catlett says his colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory are developing tools and methods to help social scientists, economists, policymakers, and climate scientists study cities.
Credit: Benedict Campbell
Argonne National Laboratory recently hosted the Argonne OutLoud series, during which grid computing pioneer and big data visionary Charlie Catlett delivered a presentation on "Big Data and the Future of Cities." The presentation examined how emerging technologies in high-performance computing, embedded systems, and data analytics can help mitigate some of the challenges associated with increased urbanization.
Catlett says with data sources and technologies catalyzing new applications and services, there is an opportunity to make policy that is proactive rather than reactive. He says Argonne researchers are developing tools and methods to help social scientists, economists, policymakers, and climate scientists study cities. The primary goal is to get different fields that use computing and computer scientists that develop the systems to work together.
"One of the ways to think about the laboratory is we run national and international instruments [such as Mira, the world's fifth fastest supercomputer] to do the kind of science you couldn't do in the laboratory of a university or a small company," Catlett says.
He currently is working with the City of Chicago on the Array of Things project, which aims to build a platform that will enable researchers to collect data for various kinds of scientific inquiries into the sustainability and operation of cities.
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