{"id":38948,"date":"2023-06-23T15:18:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T19:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/?p=38948"},"modified":"2025-03-30T13:06:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T17:06:47","slug":"smart-technology-open-source-and-equitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/smart-technology-open-source-and-equitable\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Technology: Open Source and Equitable"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Christos Cassandras, Distinguished Professor of Engineering, (ECE, SE), and Head of the Division of Systems Engineering, Hariri Institute Faculty Affiliate, CISE Co-founder, Boston University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Between 2012 and 2017, the number of car accidents in Boston rose by 33%. Depending on the year, 25% to 31% of all reported accidents in Boston resulted in non-fatal injuries. Christos Cassandras<\/a>, Distinguished Professor of Engineering and Head of the Division of Systems Engineering,<\/span>\u00a0is working to mitigate this issue through smart technology. By implementing cooperative autonomous vehicles, which can communicate with each other, he aims to improve safety, congestion, and energy consumption.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Cassandras has deep experience in advancing understanding and new technologies for smart cities through the control and optimization of systems. His areas of interest include multi-agent systems, autonomous systems, and cooperative control.\u00a0<\/o:p><\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWithin Systems Engineering we look at systems on both the individual level and as a part of a bigger network,\u201d\u00a0explains Cassandras. \u201cMy work focuses on large systems (sometimes referred to as \u201csystems of systems\u201d) with many dynamic agents, like cars and robots, moving together. I look at how to coordinate these agents so that they cooperate in order to meet specific system-wide objectives.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

In many such systems, these agents are competing against each other for a common resource, like cars competing for space on the road. Cassandras\u2019 research focuses on the principle that it is more efficient for agents to cooperate than compete and that cooperation results in a more socially optimal equilibrium.\u00a0<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/o:p><\/span>Cassandras is working on a <\/span>Red Hat Collaboratory Research Incubation project<\/span> entitled <\/span>\u201cCreating a global open research platform to better understand social sustainability using data from a real-life smart village\u201d<\/a><\/span> as part of a partnership between Boston University and Red Hat housed at the <\/span>Hariri Institute of Computing. <\/b>The goal of the project is to develop open source, smart city infrastructure. This project aims to develop smart traffic lights in Veber\u00f6d, Sweden whereby traffic lights will adjust the duration of a red or green light depending on road congestion.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cIf you have ever been stuck at a red light when there is no traffic, you might have thought about why the light doesn\u2019t just switch to green because the competing road is empty,\u201d says Cassandras. <\/span>\u201cThis technology exists, using cameras to detect when cars are present or not, but it has not yet been widely adopted. <\/span>In Veber\u00f6d, Sweden, we\u2019re developing a platform that will act as a digital twin of the town so that we can demonstrate how the traffic lights work. Then, we\u2019re going to begin implementing the lights in the real town.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

The open source nature of the project is a new phenomenon promoting collaboration between researchers instead of keeping everything confidential. The platform will enable researchers to work together on this problem and study topics regarding smart cities, like mobility and sustainability.\u00a0<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe nature of open source software for this project is that we\u2019re not trying to implement smart traffic lights in only Veber\u00f6d,\u201d Cassandras explains. \u201cWe\u2019re developing the solution so that once it is proven in Veber\u00f6d, it can be transferred to New York, Boston, or any other city in the world. The concept of open source is becoming more widespread because it promotes sharing and building off of each other\u2019s ideas.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to this project, Cassandras is also working with researchers from the University of Delaware and Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a grant titled\u00a0<\/span>\u201cAn Online Learning Framework for Socially Emerging Mixed Mobility\u201d<\/a><\/span>\u00a0from the National Science Foundation to analyze equity access in mobility. The goal of the project is to develop a socially-optimal mobility system, defined by its efficiency, equity in transportation, and rebound effects, which are the ripple effects of the system on society.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/o:p><\/span>\u201cThis grant looks at equity as a measure of mobility and questions how to share resources fairly and efficiently. It establishes a framework with new approaches to enhance accessibility, safety, and social justice in transportation systems,\u201d said Cassandras. \u201cResearchers look at energy, security, and privacy as metrics for developing smart technology. We want to bring \u201cequity\u201d into the picture as another metric for researchers to consider.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

People that don\u2019t have access to new technologies are left at a disadvantage and this inequity exists throughout the United States and the world. As smart technology begins to be implemented in cities, Cassandras\u2019 research on equity will contribute to making the technology accessible to everyone.\u00a0<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Christos Cassandras has received several awards including the 2011 IEEE Control Systems Technology Award, the Distinguished Member Award of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2006), and a 2011 prize and a 2014 prize for the IBM\/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge competition. He was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control from 1998 through 2009 and was the 2012 President of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS).\u00a0<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between 2012 and 2017, the number of car accidents in Boston rose by 33%. Depending on the year, 25% to 31% of all reported accidents in Boston resulted in non-fatal injuries. Christos Cassandras, Distinguished Professor of Engineering and Head of the Division of Systems Engineering,\u00a0is working to mitigate this issue through smart technology. By implementing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10316,"featured_media":38952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[204,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38948"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41693,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38948\/revisions\/41693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}