Looking forward to my visit to Florianópolis, Brazil. I will deliver a masterclass on governance and innovation in smart cities as part of a Council on Australia Latin America Relations (COALAR) grant funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia at the KCWS2019: SUSTENTABILIDADE E INOVAÇÃO NA ERA DO CONHECIMENTO.
I will present findings from my research on fragile cities at the 2019 Annual ICMA Conference. This research was funded by ICMA as part of my research fellowship. Michael Hunter collaborated with me on this research project.
Resiliency, cybersecurity, and creating more sustainable places are all topics being discussed by local government practitioners and scholars. Could it be that as local governments are increasing reliance on technology that they are becoming more fragile in the absence of considering some of the socio-economic consequences? Join this roundtable to offer your thoughts and opinions.
As artificial intelligence technologies take over larger number of tasks, India will face unique impacts of automation relative to other countries. With its large and young population, advances in AI will affect India in aspects from jobs to quality of life. Incidentally, the Indian economy is currently ill-equipped to face the advent of automation and AI. To read more...
Along with colleagues Wenting Yang and Bo Fan, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, I have a paper accepted at Journal of Cleaner Production.
Spatial-Temporal Effect of Household Solid Waste on Illegal Dumping
Illegal dumping is an increasingly costly problem with profoundly negative consequences for the livability and sustainability of our communities. The problem of illegal dumping is particularly acute in the developing world. While the literature is rich in descriptive studies on illegal dumping, few studies leverage large-scale spatial-temporal data through innovative analytical tools to study the actual dynamics of household illegal waste dumping. Our study aims to fill this gap by developing a multilevel theoretical model with which to illustrate the impact of illegal dumping. We explore the spatial-temporal distribution of illegal dumping cases using data mining. Next, we integrate datasets reflecting different levels into a hierarchical data structure organized by membership function. We then use a hierarchical generalized linear model to validate our multilevel model. The results indicate that the spatial factors have a significant relationship with illegal dumping, whereas the direct influence of temporal and community-level factors on illegal dumping is insignificant. Furthermore, the moderating effect of management level and public order on the relationship between spatial features and illegal dumping is significant. Based on our results, we offer several suggestions for preventing illegal dumping.
I wrapped up another wonderful week at Università Bocconi co-teaching a class on Innovation and Big Data for the Public Sector with my colleague, Maria Cucineello. 
Looking forward to delivering a plenary talk at 2019 PUBSIC Conference in Milan, Italy on Jan 25, 2019.
To read more about my thoughts on smart communities, autonomous systems, and the future of our cities, please visit the ICMA 19 on 2019 book.
Looking forward to my visit to the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
Date: January 14, 2019
Shaping the Future of Autonomous Systems in Society
Emerging technologies are fundamentally impacting and transforming all aspects of our society. I am particularly concerned with how technological innovations impact 1) the design of our public institutions, 2) the apparatuses through which we shape, implement, and evaluate public policies, and 3) our governance frameworks for public goods. All indications suggest that we are moving toward a world where autonomous systems will dictate how we interface and interact with other agents and objects in our society. We can take advantage of emerging technologies to make our societies more livable, just, resilient, and sustainable. To realize this future, we need active and sustained engagement by scholars across a myriad of disciplines, especially public policy and management.
Public policy and governance scholars have largely been absent when it comes to engineering efforts related to the design and deployment of autonomous systems and policy debates that will shape their impact on our society. In this talk, I will outline why we need active engagement by public policy and management scholars during phases of autonomous systems development and implementation. Examples will be drawn from over a dozen research engagements that have studied emerging technologies in the public sector, from predictive analytic systems to blockchain, social media platforms, and machine learning algorithms. I will outline key governance dilemmas and policy challenges confronting public agencies as they try to keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovations.
