Georgia Smart Communities Challenge Selects Milton For Project

MILTON, GA — After a successful launch in 2018, Georgia Tech’s Georgia Smart Communities Challenge named four new grant recipients at a special event at the government center in Macon June 18.

The 2019 winning proposals are Milton Smarter Safer Routes to School, Columbus Smart Uptown, Macon Smart Neighborhoods, and Woodstock Smart Master Plan and Corridor Study.

"We’re honored to be selected as one of only four grant recipients for the Georgia Smart Communities challenge,” said Milton Mayor Joe Lockwood. “Our proposal provides the city and its school partners the opportunity to pilot technology for Milton’s parents and students that directly promotes health and wellness, improves traffic congestion, and reduces emissions. We look forward to replicating this across the city with other area schools.”

This is the second round of Georgia Smart Communities Challenge, a funding and technical assistance program for local governments in the state of Georgia. Recipients are to develop a pilot project around mobility and equity and smart resilience with assistance from a Georgia Tech researcher. The projects utilize smart technology such as intelligent infrastructures, information, and communication technologies; Internet-of-Things devices; and other computational or digital technologies such as data centers and portals, web and smartphone applications, and automated digital services.

Here is the summary of each of the new projects:

• Milton Smarter Safer Routes to School, City of Milton. To promote walking and biking to school, this project will create a network of programmed devices such as smart phones to connect students and parents and arrange supervised groups, designate safe primary routes, and provide wait times for students wishing to join the walking/biking groups. Kari Watkins and Angshuman Guin of the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering will provide technical assistance, and the key collaborator is Fulton County Schools.

• Columbus Smart Uptown, Columbus-Muscogee County. The project seeks to improve safety and security, transportation systems, and connectivity to drive economic growth in the uptown district through the installation of Internet-of-Things devices, providing public wifi, and integrating data into management. Georgia Tech researchers involved include John Taylor of civil engineering and director of the Network Dynamics Lab, Neda Mohammadi of civil engineering, and Russ Clark of the College of Computing. The collaborators include Uptown Columbus and the Muscogee County Schools.

• Macon Smart Neighborhoods, Macon-Bibb County. This project will address underserved areas of the community by installing smart kiosks that will provide internet connectivity and on-demand services. This will promote community empowerment and give an equal voice to all residents. Working with Arthi Rao of the Georgia Tech College of Design and the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development, the project’s collaborators include the Macon Transit Authority, Macon-Bibb Urban Development Authority, Downtown Business Improvement District, Eisenhower Business Improvement District, Bibb County Schools, Mercer University, Middle Georgia State University, Central Georgia Technical College, and Wesleyan College.

• Woodstock Smart Master Plan and Corridor Study, City of Woodstock. This project will conduct a smart corridor and infrastructure study to improve mobility and congestion in the city and deal with rapid growth and uneven commuting patterns. Ramachandra Sivakumar of the Georgia Tech College of Design and Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization will consult. Collaborators include the Woodstock Downtown Development Authority and Black Airplane design and development agency.

“The Smart Communities Challenge, at its core, is about helping communities thrive and grow for the future,” said Pedro Cherry, executive vice president of customer service and operations for Georgia Power. “At Georgia Power, we share in that commitment to building a bright future for our state and we know that technology plays a critical role. Working with a leading research university like Georgia Tech and investing in smart, innovative solutions with local community partners is just one way we are doing our part.”

The City of Milton will use the GA Smart Communities Challenge grant funding to study and develop a smart-interactive app for smart phones to provide real-time group communication for parents of kids who want to walk to school in a group with other kids, also known as a “Walking School Bus”. The app will have features and information that would improve and encourage the children to walk and bike to and from School and reduce the number of parents’ drop-off trips via cars.

The city of Milton has approximately 39,000 residents and is very family oriented with highly educated young residents. 20 percent of the city population is 14 years old or younger. This project will build on the accomplishments of a previous Safe Route To School Program (SRTS) which added sidewalk sections, traffic signals, cross walks and signage to the city. The targeted test area to implement this smart mobility project is downtown Milton in the historic Crabapple community.

The city of Milton will partner with three schools in the adjacent historic village of Crabapple tree. These schools are the Crossing Elementary School, Northwestern Middle School and Milton High School. This area has already implemented the Georgia program “Safe Route To Schools”, which promotes connecting sidewalks from residential neighborhoods to the school to encourage students to walk to school.

Safety was the number one concern of the city, schools and parents. Many parents are worried about the personal safety of their children walking to schools. The Smarter, Safer Routes to Schools app will look at filling the information gaps to address the safety perceptions of the parents to promote the organized Walking School Bus with adult supervision to calm some fears.

The app would allow parents to set up and join a Walking School Bus, see real-time location and estimated arrival times of their children, see which friends and parents will be on the route, see the number of students and parent volunteers walking to school that day, link to the local weather and temperature, request Milton or Fulton County Schools Police Officer escort for the walk, and get confirmations about their kids arrival at school.

Dr. Watkins, Georgia Tech professor in School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Dr. Guin, senior research engineer at Georgia tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will advise and assist in capturing the functional requirements for the app and overseeing the design based on previous open source code. Metrics such as the Level of Traffic Stress will be used to assess which streets are the most walkable and bikeable based on traffic volumes and speeds. These aspects will be incorporated into the app to provide information to the parents about the best routes. In the last phase of the project, Dr. Guin and Dr. Watkins will participate in the evaluation of the impact of the Smarter Safer Routes to School app using technology to collect data about the acceptance of the app and the resulting changes in walking and biking behavior.

Work on the 2018 projects will continue as the grant ends in September, which is the timing of the launch for the 2019 projects.

In total, the Georgia Smart program has had 18 free events with 1,118 attendees and 110 national and local speakers. Webinars have been viewed more than 900 times, as well as monthly newsletters delivered to over 2,600 subscribers.

Collaborators in the Georgia Smart program include Georgia Tech, the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Georgia Association of Regional Commissions, Association County Commissioners of Georgia, Georgia Chamber of Commerce, Georgia Municipal Association, Georgia Department of Community Affairs, Georgia Department of Economic Development, Georgia Planning Association, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Technology Association of Georgia, and Georgia Power.

Learn more about the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge at http://www.smartcities.ipat.gatech.edu/georgia-smart.