Texas A&M University
In February 2022, Texas A&M University was awarded nearly $1,200,000 for the Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program: Artificial Intelligence for IoT Information (PSIAP - AI3) Prize Competition.
The rapid deployment of 5G infrastructure, Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, smart buildings, transportation, and public safety data streams benefit communities across the country. However, these technologies created a flood of data, making it difficult for public safety leaders and individual first responders to make use of this data. These building and city data streams are difficult to segment, process, integrate, and act on, particularly for real‐time data analysis. Through their “Smart Communities, Smart Responders (SCSR) – An AI for IoT Prize Competition,” Texas A&M University seeks to accelerate the development of real‐time data visualization and rapid integration of IoT sensors for first responders, giving these stakeholders access to various streams of IoT data delivered in usable formats that can help solve complex challenges, thus improving America’s public safety capability.
Texas A&M University (TAMU) Internet 2 Technology Evaluation Center (ITEC), US Ignite, the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), and Texas A&M Institute for Data Science (TAMIDS) assembled a powerful team with decades of experience in each of their respective areas of expertise to engage in their “Smart Communities, Smart Responders (SCSR) – An AI for IoT” Prize Competition. Texas A&M University, TEEX, and US Ignite have worked across the globe with over 150 partner cities, companies, universities, and nonprofits to create next‐generation applications that provide transformative public benefit.
Texas A&M University’s team is made of eight key personnel with diverse backgrounds including competition design, networking, data science, public safety communications, and emergency response to design and execute the challenge.
In order to obtain enough IoT data to drive an AI learning system in the right format with the appropriate privacy policies invoked and the appropriate permissions, Texas A&M University’s project will collect IoT data from real world, real time sensors for it to be practical for use with an AI engine. To collect the data required, TAMU ITEC will work with TEEX to place sensors at key locations in Disaster City, Texas’ world‐renowned urban search and rescue training campus. Sensors installed on props and stations across the training facility that hosts training for more than 20,000 first responders annually will provide a data set that is true to real world situations. Additionally, Texas A&M University will conduct an exercise at TEEX to inform ITEC’s design and deployment of an IoT architecture to collect the sensor data.
Overall objectives of Texas A&M University’s SCSR – An AI for IoT Prize Competition include:
Participants of the SCSR - An AI for IoT Prize Competition will focus on operating and demonstrating the accuracy and scalability of an AI3 system. The competitors’ key deliverable is a functioning system that can demonstrate end‐to‐end functionality, with integrated operations by public safety professionals in a live exercise.
It will be critical that technology be interoperable with existing software and hardware solutions currently leveraged by first responders. The key innovations submitted through Texas A&M University’s SCSR - An AI for IoT Prize Competition will be related to the new data science models leveraging available sensors to support real‐time data visualization. The output of these models needs to be distilled and delivered so first responders can quickly act on the information in the future. The key impacts envisioned in Texas A&M University’s prize design approach, will establish: