Georgia Smart Communities Challenge Selects Woodstock For Project

WOODSTOCK, 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 will continue to work on expanding our road network and making grid street connections in our Downtown," Donnie Henriques, mayor said. "Using this GA Smart Community Challenge Grant to also add technological improvements to our traffic management system will be an important part of our future."

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 Woodstock will develop a masterplan and a Smart Corridor Study for optimizing infrastructure needs and modeling land use changes using a grant funded from Georgia Smart.

The city of Woodstock is located about 30 miles north of Atlanta and has experienced significant growth in the past few decades. Its population has doubled from 10,050 to 22,027 according to the 2010 U.S. Census. This population growth along with a variety of community focused recreational events periodically held in the city has caused traffic congestion and parking challenges. The amount of traffic and lack of parking are constant complaints from Woodstock citizens, business owners, and visitors.

Woodstock’s Downtown District has several physical barriers that contribute to the traffic congestion. The presence of I-575 on the west side of Downtown, the railroad which runs north-south, and an odd intersection configuration in the center of town involving several streets adds to the traffic complexity. Current conditions along the main corridors in town are varied and unpredictable at times. Commuters are also a significant part of the traffic congestion. 78% of residents leave the county for employment per the Cherokee Office of Economic Development Study. The corridors experience both major congestion during rush hour and dangerous speeding during non-peak times.

Cherokee County is projected to experience continued rapid growth over the next few decades and Woodstock is expected to be the destination for both residents of Woodstock and those who live in the surrounding community. This will bring many challenges in balancing traffic and pedestrians in the core of the city.

The city of Woodstock hopes to increase efficiency in the corridors by utilizing autonomous vehicles with drop-off lanes, to reduce the need for parking, and managed right of way traffic controls with smart data-capturing sensors to ease traffic flow without destroying the walkability and family-oriented atmosphere of its downtown.

Ramachandra Sivakumar (Siva), Senior Research Engineer - Georgia Tech Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization (CSPAV) will help the city of Woodstock by leading the research on Smart Data Governance and Optimizing infrastructure needs & modeling land use changes. The research team will work with the City of Woodstock to develop a guidance charter for smart data governance that outlines methods, polices, implementation, and management as pillars of smart data governance. The research team will also study the existing conditions along the proposed corridor considering a variety of influencing factors to derive a set of agent-based models to visualize alternative scenarios. The completed study will help the city to smartly plan and engineer solutions.

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.