Background:

Population dynamics, changes in climate, and diversity of available resources all influence the quality of life in urban and rural areas.  Applying innovative techniques and using data creatively to research and plan urban and rural areas will help improve residents’ lives and help preserve social, economic, and environmental resources for future generations.   

Your challenge is to plan next-generation sustainable cities, towns, and villages that integrate data and smart/connected technologies in various domains, including energy, education, transportation, agriculture, environment, and health.  Ensure that the benefits of smart planning are accessible to all populations.

This challenge addresses the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly to engage all countries and all stakeholders in a collaborative partnership.  The SDGs aim to build a better future for all people by achieving sustainable development in three dimensions – economic, social, and environmental – in the spirit of strengthened global solidarity:

• Goal 1.5: By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters. 
  
• Goal 2.4: By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystem, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
  
• Goal 7.1: By 2030, ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services.
  
• Goal 11.3: By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.
  
• Goal 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate–related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.

Considerations:

You can design a high-level plan of smart cities, towns, and villages, or develop tools and ideas that contribute to smart planning and running of these settlements. 

Your solution can address any or all of the following topics:

• Data collection tools
  
• Data assimilation tools
  
• Application of data to settlement planning

You may:

• Design low cost sensors to be distributed around urban and/or rural areas to help observe and respond to local conditions, such as atmospheric processes and their impacts.  For example, consider how atmospheric processes will be affected by changes in climate while planning for sustainable and healthy living. 
  
• Explore the impacts of urban heat on health, infrastructure (including transportation and energy), and society.  Design tools for remote sensing observations and modeling, and/or for adaptation and mitigation (for example, building designs with open spaces and green roofs).
  
• Develop low-cost, wireless-enabled, battery-powered sensors to collect and transmit real-time data about other environmental variables, including precipitation, wind, relative humidity, noise, pollution, vibration etc., to compare trends in rural versus urban settlements.  Explore innovative applications for these sensors to benefit science and society.

Additional tips:

• Consider the needs of urban versus rural environments when developing tools.  For example, appropriate monitoring of urban environments may necessitate a dense network of sensors making frequent measurements. 
  
• Ensure connectivity of tools to share data and allow timely responses.
  
• Give care to design cost-effective and resource-effective tools and plans for greater global impact.

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