In a recent milestone event, National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Smart and Connected Communities (SCC) Project team invited community members in Alameda County to the 2nd Alameda Community Meeting on January 12, 2024. The workshop, graciously hosted by the Head-Royce School in Oakland, shared updates on the SCC Project’s diverse endeavors.
The gathering delved into progress updates on organizational networks research, digital twin development, and the exploration of serious games. Notably, participants, drawing on their local knowledge and expertise, provided valuable feedback on evacuation simulation models and current concepts of the minigames.
Afterwards, participants shared useful information with the research team about the actual context of both the traffic models and the minigames and suggested specific communities as study sites for wildfire evacuation simulations. Looking ahead, the research team will continue to work closely with community organizations, scheduling meetings in smaller groups to refine and develop models that reflect possible dilemmas that residents would face in an actual wildfire and prototypes tailored to the needs of the Alameda County residents. Additionally, the SCC Project team is planning additional workshops in early summer in Marin County and in fall in Alameda County to report back on modeling progress and to obtain further feedback from local organizations about the research team’s developing models, with a particular focus on wildfire simulations and digital twin designs.
The SCC project team sends out a newsletter every three months to community members who have been part of this project in any way, like joining workshops, small group meetings, or interviews, and will continue to keep participants informed of project progress. The team remains open to questions, feedback, and continued collaboration with the community as they work toward building sustainable resilience to wildfires.
For more details, refer to the SCC website for updates on the SCC Project’s journey.
