Data for Resilient Cities
CITIES Seminar Series with Jay Sadiq, Founder & CVO of FortyGuard

Abstract: Today’s data is available in our cities; many people are sourcing it or accessing it. Policymakers operate with the use of data, and they always seek better ways to source more data for their decisions. Enterprise is looking for profitability, and they seek proprietary data analytics and insights to improve their services, operations, and product offerings. Everyone is working for the betterment of the consumer, and now it is up to us – the innovators – to build technology that can make our cities much more resilient, but how?

Date: 6th of March, 2023
Time: 6 PM
Location: NYUAD, C2 – East Forum 

Kindly RSVP on this link: https://forms.gle/W4g8ghBHetZe4RVT8
*Open to all NYUAD Community

CITIES Seminar Series: An Eco-Acoustic Survey of the Impacts of Anthropogenic Noise Pollution on Jubail Island’s Avian Populations 

On December 8, 2022, CITIES hosted another Seminar Series with Prof. Matteo Marciano, Assistant Professor of Practice of Music Technology. In this talk, Professor Matteo Marciano aimed to unveil the level of noise pollution impacting natural life in Abu Dhabi. This research aims to demonstrate the impacts of large-scale urban development on human and wildlife populations through acoustic surveys recording biophonic and anthropogenic sounds. The focus is to minimize the detrimental effect of noise on humans and animals in Abu Dhabi.

Invitation to the Second CITIES Symposium

Dear All,

On behalf of CITIES Leadership, we would like to invite you to the Second CITIES Symposium that will take place on November 20th-21st, 2022, at New York University Abu Dhabi Campus – A6-Conference Center, room 001AB.

Kindly see the below poster for more details:

If you wish to attend, please RSVP to this form or via the QR code.
The agenda and further information will be provided upon your RSVP response. 

*Please note that this event is by invitation only. Kindly share this invitation with colleagues that you think might be interested. 

Thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you soon. 

Best,

CITIES

DIDI Project Design Space – Gold Prize

Congratulations to the team TechPhantom (Amtul Baseer, Jaydev Nair, Jazlynn Mujeeb Valiyara, Reel Osman, Trun Vishal Ramteke), who were guided by the ASCE@NYUAD student team, for winning the Gold prize and receiving an in-person internship at Schneider Electric. 

CITIES Partnerships with FortyGuard

CITIES and FortyGuard, a tech startup under HUB71 in a mission to cool down cities, have joined forces to combine data science, predictive analytics, and new sustainable construction materials to understand how the built and natural environments behave in a city and combat the urban heat islands effect. This partnership will create several networking opportunities between the two institutions, encouraging student participation in research and connection and collaboration between researchers. HE Badr Al-Olama, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Hub71, and Executive Director, UAE Clusters, Mubadala Investment Company, HE Masaood Al Masaood, Chairman of the Emirates Angels Investors Association, and Fatma Abdulla Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategy and Planning, New York University Abu Dhabi, attended the event.

Green Arabia Team winning a trophy at the Shell plc – INJAZ competition

Congratulations to the team Green Arabia (Nastassja Gerlich, Federico Jannelli, Elvira Selivanova, Yehowahi Sekan, Steffanie Dias) from the New York University Abu Dhabi for winning a trophy at the Shell plc – INJAZ competition hosted by the Dutch Pavilion. Special thanks also to their three mentors, Joseph Harrison (Shell Abu Dhabi), Prof. Daniel Johnson (NYUAD), and Prof. Philip Panicker (NYUAD), for their support.

The DIDI Project Design Space

DIDI is a design and innovation program hosted by Dubai’s Institute of Design and Technology aimed at high school students worldwide. This program encourages design thinking methods to solve today’s problems and create a better tomorrow. The team TechPhantom (Amtul Baseer, Jaydev Nair, Jazlynn Mujeeb Valiyara, Reel Osman, Trun Vishal Ramteke) had the opportunity to solve problems for real-life clients, in their case Schneider Electric. Over eight months, they worked on developing a Smart Home prototype based on a four-step design process: analysis, ideation, prototype creation, presentation, and pitching. The final steps of the process are the boot camp and final event, where the selected teams will pitch their prototyped solutions to a jury of clients, other professionals, DIDI professors, and experts. The team collaborated and came up with numerous ideas to create a sustainable home (in terms of construction materials and features) and makes the best use of technology. 

The ASCE@NYUAD student team and CITIES have supported the team, and they have been chosen for the DIDI Project Design Space finale. 

“We’d like to thank Jason, Jennifer, Mawadda, Yasmeen, and the CITIES team for taking the time to speak with us and guide us properly. The NYUAD Student Research Team’s research was incredibly helpful. They helped us understand how buildings can be designed to minimize the Heat Island effect to assure a more comfortable future. For instance, we learned how using green rooftops and construction materials could play a key role in managing temperature. And more importantly, they helped nurture our designing abilities, guiding us to identify the root of a problem and then develop methods to create solutions. They essentially gave us a crash course on the design. We also learned that designing is not about how things look but how things work. We think their support and feedback truly enhanced our home, and we felt it was essential for us in reaching the DIDI Project Design Space finale.”