| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 3, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 10, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 1531046 |
| Award Instrument: | Cooperative Agreement |
| Program Manager: |
David Corman
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2021 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $5,992,794.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $7,166,043.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2016 = $3,925,055.00 FY 2018 = $11,000.00 FY 2019 = $1,156,749.00 FY 2020 = $5,500.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1150 18TH ST NW WASHINGTON DC US 20036-3880 (202)365-9219 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1200 18th Street NW, Suite 810 Washington DC US 20036-1904 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Special Projects - CNS, CISE Research Resources, CPS-Cyber-Physical Systems |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
The economic and competitive value of widely available advanced networking has become well known, with availabity of next generation networking impacting factors as basic as homeowner property values and housing rents. However, deployment of next generation networking in U.S. cities and regions has lagged that of a number of other nations. This project assembles and jump-starts a growing and sustainable ecosystem of smart gigabit city testbeds which support applications delivering important new advances in healthcare, education, public safety, and other national priority areas. These advanced ecosystems leverage advanced Internet concepts developed by prior NSF research programs that are not yet available on today's commercial Internet. By leveraging existing multi-gigabit links to interconnect the cities, and by providing city-based interoperable application infrastructure the project allows entrepreneurs and academics in one city to write and trial visually-compelling and ultra-responsive new Internet applications that can be replicated into other cities and regions. An important key will be the involvement of citizens and community organizations in building and experimenting with advanced networking applications addressing national priorities.
The project will: 1) Mobilize and interconnect 12 to 15 cities and regions as smart gigabit city testbeds and connect to a small number of other volunteers from the U.S. UCAN community anchor community; 2) leverage GENI technology and deploy a new community-focused computing infrastructure; support the develop and adapt national priority and smart city applications that uniquely leverage this infrastructure and can be replicated in the other cities and regions; 4) Identify novel unsolved problems that can help define areas for future Internet research and 5) share information among ecosystem participants. To maximize the network effects, the project will utilize interoperable advanced wired and wireless applications platforms, interoperable federation, authentication and authorization, and built-in security measures and measurement/logging. This project builds the initial infrastructure upon the distributed infrastructure pioneered and deployed by the GENI and prior US Ignite projects in the academic or civic networking infrastructures of 56 cities in the United States.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Sustainable Ecosystem of Smart Applications (SESA) project translates NSF-funded research into an ecosystem of smart communities, startups, infrastructure, academia, and local sponsorship. Before SESA, there were only a few scattered research projects making small science and technology contributions to isolated communities. With SESA, the value of translational NSF research grew exponentially as the US Ignite nonprofit, armed with the SESA cooperative agreement, created national awareness and built the first sustainable network of communities deploying smart applications created by science and engineering advances.
This cooperative agreement is known as “Smart Gigabit Communities” and that term appears on 4,540 websites. It is the major activity of US Ignite and sometimes is referenced as "US Ignite." US Ignite credits its National Science Foundation funding, and. references to both both US Ignite and the National Science Foundation appear on 9,260 websites. It would be difficult to find any other national-scale NSF-funded activity that has generated so many positive impressions.
One measure of the translational impact is the number of communities engaging with each other and US Ignite. In 2015, four communities drawn from those attending workshops that preceded the NSF Smart and Connected Communities program worked with US Ignite. In 2017, US Ignite launched the first Smart Application Summit with NSF support and recognized 19 communities working in collaborative models drawing upon academia, industry, and community resources. By 2019, the number had grown to 30. In 2022, thanks to a grant supplement, it's now a sustainable 50 communities with another dozen in the pipeline.
The original NSF-sponsored annual smart applications / smart communities summit in 2017 is now a commercially-produced conference. Through a partnership with TechConnect, the gathering draws as many as 2,300 people to hear academics discuss their latest related research, community leaders discuss locally-inspired investments in smart technology, a variety of startups share their vision for new science and technology in both urban and rural environments, and, recently, more mature companies offer products and services based on the SESA and similar pipelines.
US Ignite has played a vital role by seeking out relevant academic work, envisioning the potential impact of that work and matching it to communities whose needs it can serve. US Ignite has also encouraged and trained over 60 startup teams to commercialize the technologies.Matching support for NSF’s investment in the SESA project has come from industry (more than $2.5 million in contributions), charitable foundations (including Kauffman, Schmidt, Knight, Mott, Purdue, and others), and investments by the communities themselves.While US Ignite was the first, other nonprofits also entered the smart city space, including MetroLab Networks, the Mayors Innovation Project, the NIST-organized Global City Teams Challenge. US Ignite collaborates with these organizations to form a dense and sustainable support ecosystem.
We are pleased to note that other federal agencies have been working cooperatively with NSF and often with US Ignite on smart community applications of technology including the Departments of Transportation, Homeland Security, and Commerce, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense which has now adopted US Ignite and the SESA ecosystem to power smart base projects at MCAS Miramar, Ft. Carson, and Ft. Benning.
SESA expertise also setup US Ignite to help connect the unconnected via Project OVERCOME.
Although this was a CISE cooperative agreement, the smart cities area also crosses into SBE, ENG, and HER.
By the numbers, SESA has accomplished:
152 applications/services developed, with 78 projects commercialized, in the process of being commercialized, or being deployed within a municipality
60 startup teams supported via Kauffman FastTrac TechVenture mentoring and training program
5 communities cooperating on air pollution microclimate crowd-sourced sensing
7 communities Digital Town Squares established
15 communities held reverse pitches to solve community-posed problems90 academic researchers involved in civic projects
287 collaborators
150 graduate students engaged
62 mayors/city managers engaged in long-term projects
12 applications for academic faculty promotion and tenure supported
450 (approx.) presentations made to community officials and academics
1 NSF Smart and Connected Community PI Workshop hosted
1 diverse US Ignite staff including multiple women, multiple people of color, and a broad age range from 20-72
600 scholarly papers and book chapters reference the work arising from this cooperative agreement
dozens of videos featuring NSF-sponsored smart and connected community projects have been created, provided to NSF’s publicity channels and featured on NSF's own website.
US Ignite supports communities with populations ranging from 16,000 (Red Wing, MN) to 1.6 million (Philadelphia, PA).
US Ignite’s 20-person staff supporting communities also reflects diversity in gender, color, and experience.
US Ignite has an active program involving multiple interns in research and the science of applying new technologies to solve problems in real world situations.
Most importantly, US Ignite is now sustainably advancing the original goals proposed to NSF at increasingly higher levels of impact.
Last Modified: 04/30/2022
Modified by: Glenn Ricart
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