NSF Smart and Connected Communities

Welcome to Our Smart and Connected Community Project

This project is focused on helping older adults move around cities more easily and safely. As many people age, getting around urban areas can become difficult due to poor infrastructure or design that doesn’t meet their needs. Our research uses new technologies—like artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR)—to better understand these challenges and create realistic city simulations. These simulations help us test and improve how streets, sidewalks, and transportation systems work for older adults.

What makes this project unique is how it combines advanced tools with real community feedback to make cities more inclusive and age-friendly. The goal is to use this information to guide how cities are planned and designed, making them fairer and more accessible for everyone. The results could not only improve daily life for older adults but also help educate future engineers and scientists to design better cities for all.

As the population ages and many cities struggle with outdated infrastructure, this work becomes even more important. By using smart data tools and real-time technology, we hope to find solutions that truly reflect what older adults need—and make those changes possible in real life.

Here is the official abstract of our project by the National Science Foundation 

This Smart & Connected Communities (SCC) project supports research to address the crucial challenge of urban mobility for aging population by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) technologies. Enabled by realistic urban simulations, this project aims to improve how cities accommodate the mobility needs of older adults, making urban environments more accessible and inclusive. The novelty lies in the methodology for transforming infrastructure planning, design, and operation through advanced technologies while emphasizing social equity and user experience. The project outcomes could be used to foster inclusivity in civil infrastructure systems, enhance quality of life for the elderly, and provide educational opportunities to inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists.

This research tackles an often-overlooked problem in many cities that older adults face when navigating complex urban spaces. It becomes increasingly critical as the global population ages and civil infrastructures remain underfunded. The project employs a novel data-driven framework that integrates temporal point process-based deep learning (TPP-DL) with VR to self-generate dynamic, immersive simulations. These tools not only reflect the actual mobility challenges experienced by older adults but also allow for identification and mitigation of biases in infrastructure planning, design, and operation. By incorporating community feedback and utilizing edge computing for real-time data processing, the project ensures that the solutions being developed are both effective and practical. The long-term goal is to create smarter, more inclusive cities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

See NSF web page for additional information. 

Interested in joining our study? 

Our study will take four steps shown in the figure below. If you are interested, please contact q.wang@northeastern.edu. We look forward to your participation.