New center to develop smarter infrastructures, smarter publics

From smart utilities like the smart grid and intelligent transportation systems to social networks on sites like Facebook and YouTube, the infrastructures of tomorrow will heavily utilize information technology. While these “smart” infrastructures promise many benefits, they often require new kinds of interaction between people and the machines meant to serve them. The new Center for People and Infrastructures seeks to address the social, cultural, economic, and political side of these relationships that often receive little attention.

Bringing together experts in engineering, design, the social sciences, and computer science, the Center--part of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at Illinois--seeks to address these issues by better understanding social norms, market structures, public policies and human capabilities that shape and are affected by the development of smart infrastructures.

“The U.S. is in an infrastructure crisis driven by chronic underinvestment,” said Co-Director Christian Sandvig, an associate professor of media. “Now we hope to modernize these foundational systems that affect everyone, but to succeed we can’t think about technology alone.”

For example, broadband Internet is absent, difficult to obtain and/or expensive in much of the U.S., not because the technology doesn’t exist, but because of economic and public policy factors that affect the development of Internet infrastructure. In addition, smart meters for the power grid have been controversial among consumers who are skeptical that utilities are acting in their best interest.

The Center will initially focus on research about broadband telecommunications and energy. Researchers will work with fiber networks like UC2B (Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband), which will deliver high-quality broadband connections to several thousand households in Champaign and Urbana, to understand the consequences of fiber infrastructure for education, the economy, health and community participation. In addition, the Center will work to help identify the next generation of broadband Internet applications enabled by fiber infrastructure.

“Infrastructures are about computers, wires and pipes but they are also about human relationships, economics and justice,” said Co-Director Karrie Karahalios, associate professor of computer science. “We want to see infrastructures that not only work, but that help humans to flourish.”

Center researchers are also working to understand and clarify the interactions between users and their infrastructures by focusing on advanced forms of visualization and the representation of complexity. To teach tomorrow’s students, citizens, and policymakers about these elaborate networks, researchers will develop new educational techniques like interactive mapping and educational games.

The center’s leadership hails from across the campus; co-directors include Sandvig (media), Karahalios (computer science), Kevin Hamilton (art & design), Sally Jackson (communication), and Cedric Langbort (aerospace engineering). In addition, center research involves student and faculty collaborators from new media, human and community development, computer science, communications, library and information science, electrical and computer engineering and sociology, among other areas.
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Contact: Karrie Karahalios, Department of Computer Science, 217/265-6841.

Cedric Langbort, Department of Aerospace Engineering, 217/265-6236.

Writer: Kim Gudeman, Coordinated Science Laboratory.

Photo: Hope Hall

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.