Follow-up planned for 2019

The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center partnered with BBVA Compass to host a Sustainable Smart Cities Hackathon that took place on August 2018, where engineers from BBVA and UAB Students worked in teams to help address community issues.

The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center renewed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the new administration of the city of Birmingham during the Summer of 2018 in order to continue collaborating on projects to improve the quality of life in Birmingham.

The city of Birmingham, the UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center, and Alabama Power put together a proposal for the Smart Cities Council Readiness Challenge. Birmingham was selected one of the five winning cities at the beginning of 2018. Thanks to this grant, Birmingham receives a year’s worth of free mentoring, valuable products and services, and a custom-designed, on-site Readiness Workshop from the Smart Cities Council.

The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center (SSCRC) was appointed by the city of Birmingham to serve on the Solid Waste Authority stablished by the mayor. Representatives from the SSCRC center attended meetings and provided advice and input.

The SSCRC also hosted a strategic planning session on November 2016 where it and the city of Birmingham stablished the vision and the mission of the Solid Waste Authority as well as the goals for the upcoming year.

The National Center for Transportation Systems Productivity and Management (NCTSPM) Summer Enrichment Program is a four-week summer educational program. The goal of the program is to increase the number of competent, well-trained minority engineers, researchers, and transportation professionals working on transportation issues of importance to our region and the nation. Participants in the program are college freshmen or incoming freshmen enrolled in Alabama’s historically black colleges.

The EcoDistricts Incubator was a three-day, intensive, project-based workshop designed to accelerate district-scale sustainability across North America. The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center collaborated with the city of Birmingham on this project and focused on developing a plan for Birmingham's entrepreneurial district, which is mostly occupied by former railroad and industry lots left over from the days of the steel industry.

The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center assisted the city of Birmingham during several meetings, in the process of setting the framework of goals and measuring the progress of the community’s sustainability performance in order to develop the application to become STAR Certified. On February 2015, Birmingham received the recognition “3-STAR Certified Community.”

The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center collaborated with the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham and REV Birmingham in this great project for the city of Birmingham to become, in the beginning of the Fall 2015, the first city in North and South America to launch a bike share system that includes electric pedal-assist (pedelec) bicycles.

The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center partnered with Alabama Media Group, Auburn University, and Code for Birmingham to host Alabama’s Global Smart Cities Hackathon on February 20 through 22. The hackathon was opened to developers, students, researchers, business thinkers, policy analysts, journalists, designers, community organizers, and urban planners — anyone interested in tackling today’s biggest urban challenges.

As a result of the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, IBM gave a number of recommendations for the City of Birmingham to address, one of them being the establishment of a Mobile Food Market. The Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority provided the city of Birmingham with four decommissioned buses to use towards the mobile food market initiative. The city, together with the UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center, began to work in a plan to implement a mobile food market program in order to improve the access to healthy food choices.

The annual Sustainable Smart Cities Symposium brought national and international experts to the Birmingham community to learn about innovations in the field of sustainable smart cities.

The city of Birmingham, in collaboration with the UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center, was one of 16 cities selected worldwide to receive an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grant in 2014. The grant contributes the skills and expertise of IBM’s top talents for four weeks in Birmingham to contribute their skills and expertise to help the city address critical issues.

The Sustainable Smart Cities Youth Champions program provided middle school students attending inner-city Birmingham City schools with hands-on learning opportunities in the field of sustainability. The program consisted of four Saturday visits to UAB.

The city of Birmingham and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) took a major step toward smarter, healthier, and more sustainable development with the February 27, 2013, signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to partner on projects such as energy efficiency and city planning that accounts for a more “livable” city.