Resilience Seminar Brings ITS, CITRIS, TRUST Together

Highlighting the cross-disciplinary aspects of resilience, The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society(CITRIS), the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) and The Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST) have come together to offer a new series of lectures connecting transportation, water and cybersecurity to resilience.

As engineers, policymakers, funding agencies and first responders increasingly take note of infrastructure and its ability to withstand and recover from natural disasters and man-made disruptions, this series will use resilience as a platform in transportation, energy, and water systems to cyberinfrastructure and social networks domains.

“Resilience covers a broad scope and multiple disciplines,” says Alexandre Bayen, ITS Berkeley Director. “Bringing our centers and students together for this series highlights work we are already doing in this area and builds a stronger collaborative system across the university.”

Specifically, the seminars look at the emergence of wireless sensor networks and smartphones and how they have created opportunities to understand and better manage the behavior of critical infrastructures — including their response to disruptive events — in real time.

“As we looked at our speakers covering resilience, we realized the topics were applicable to more than just our individual projects and research teams,” said Larry Rohrbough, Executive Director, TRUST Center. “A collaboration like this was a natural development and a way to deepen what we can accomplish together.”

CITRIS initiatives in energy and infrastructure have long focused on using information technology to improve the management of the built environment, such as water systems, buildings and transportation. With a new focus on resilience and sustainability to encourage research on preparing for and recovering from natural disasters and major disruptions, CITRIS Deputy Director Camille Crittenden said the next logical step was to recognize similar work underway at ITS and TRUST and create a shared series that would attract a greater audience.

“It made a lot of sense to see what we could do together to engage researchers and practitioners working in different domains around a common theme,” says Crittenden.

The series kicks off with a lecture by Vanderbilt University’s Eugene Vorobeychik on “Machine Learning Under Attack” in 240 Bechtel Engineering Center at 1 p.m. on Thursday, March 19, 2015, as part of the TRUST Security Seminar.

UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability’s Dr. Erik Porse continues the series on Wednesday April 22, 2015, with “Managing Water Scarcity for Future Cities: What Makes Sense to Sense?” at noon in the Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, sponsored by CITRIS. Register at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/jay-lund-citris-research-exchange-and-resilience-seminar-series-tickets-15281607700

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Daniel B. Work finishes the series Friday, April 24, 2015, with “Monitoring Traffic for Incidents and Extreme Congestion Events” at 4 p.m. in 290 Hearst Mining Building as part of the ITS Transportation Seminar.