SAN FRANCISCO, May 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Linux
Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation
through open source, announced the formation of the Urban Computing
Foundation to accelerate open source software that improves
mobility, safety, road infrastructure, traffic congestion and
energy consumption in connected cities. Initial contributors
include developers from Uber, Facebook, Google, HERE Technologies,
IBM, Interline Technologies, Senseable City Labs, StreetCred Labs
and University of California San Diego
(UCSD).
As cities and transportation networks evolve into ever-more
complicated systems, urban computing is emerging as an important
field to bridge the divide between engineering, visualization and
traditional transportation systems analysis. However, these
advancements are dependent on compatibility among many technologies
across different public and private organizations. Urban Computing
Foundation will provide a neutral forum for this critical work,
including adaption of geospatial and temporal machine learning
techniques and urban environments and simulation methodologies for
modeling and predicting city-wide phenomena. To contribute to this
work, please visit the Urban Computing Foundation website.
"During moments of both technology disruption and opportunity,
open development is critical for enabling interoperability and
speeding adoption," said Jim Zemlin,
executive director of the Linux Foundation. "The Urban Computing
Foundation is poised to provide the compatibility tools and
resources for developers to create software that can map out and
operate technology services in any given urban area, ensuring
safety and equitable access to transportation."
The first project hosted at the Foundation is
https://kepler.gl/, an open source geospatial analysis tool created
by Uber for building large-scale data sets. Kepler was released in
2018 to help make it easier to create meaningful visualizations of
location data without the need for coding. Kepler.gl is used by
developers, data scientists, visualization specialists and
engineers around the world to explore and analyze a variety of
scenarios that include transportation patterns and safety trends.
Some of the companies using Kepler.gl include Airbnb, Atkins
Global, Cityswifter, HERE Technologies, Limebike, Mapbox, Sidewalk
Labs, Uber and UBILabs, among others.
"As a founding participant with the Urban Computing Foundation,
Uber is honored to contribute Kepler.gl as the initiative's first
official project," said Travis
Gorkin, Uber Data Visualization Lead and Urban Computing
Foundation TAC contributor. "Technologies like Kepler.gl have the
capacity to advance urban planning by helping policymakers and
local governments gain critical insights and better understand data
about their cities."
The Foundation will use an open governance model being developed
by the Technical Advisory Council (TAC), which includes a variety
of technical and IP stakeholders in the urban computing space.
Project inclusion will be determined by a review and curation
process managed by the TAC.
TAC contributors include:
- Drew Dara-Abrams, principal,
Interline Technologies
- Oliver Fink, director HERE XYZ,
HERE Technologies
- Travis Gorkin, engineering
manager of data visualization, Uber
- Shan He, project leader of
Kepler.gl, Uber
- Randy Meech, CEO, StreetCred
Labs
- Michal Migurski, engineering
manager of spatial computing, Facebook
- Drishtie Patel, product manager of maps, Facebook
- Paolo Santi, senior researcher,
MIT
- Max Sills, attorney, Google
The Urban Computing Foundation aims to provide open access to
tools and platforms for developers in both public and private
organizations who are building connected solutions for mobility,
reducing congestion and pollution and increasing access; safety,
new technologies to create a world where it's safe and easy for
everyone to get around; and insights, anonymized data from citizens
that can help urban planning around the world.
Founding Participant Comments
Facebook
"We
find the Urban Computing Foundation's mission to be compelling in
that it not only has the potential to minimize pollution,
congestion and consumption but to ensure that technology has a
positive impact on the urban landscapes. We are pleased to
join the Urban Computing Foundation as a founding contributor,"
said Michael Cheng from the Facebook
Open Source Team.
Google
"Civic organizations and citizens alike need
ready access to data about their cities to make better decisions
about transportation, construction and energy consumption. The
Urban Computing Foundation's mission to make that possible is
closely aligned with Google's approach to open data. Making it
easier to access, visualize and process these kinds of large data
sets is indeed at the heart of Google Cloud. We are excited to join
the Urban Computing Foundation as a founding contributor and work
on our shared goal of improving the world we live in," said
Chris DiBona, director, Open Source
and Science Outreach, Google Cloud.
IBM
"The 'sharing economy' is continuing to find new
opportunities for consumers and businesses to connect in amazing
ways. We believe the Urban Computing Foundation's mission of
providing a transparent and fair way for appropriate urban data
sharing will foster open development and rapid innovation. For over
a decade, we've focused on helping to build the latest open source
projects and communities, and sharing in the work under open
governance. We are pleased to continue this tradition with the
Urban Computing Foundation and look forward to overall benefits the
community will produce together," said Todd
Moore, vice president IBM Open Technology and Developer
Advocacy, IBM.
HERE
"HERE Technologies is excited to join the Urban Computing
Foundation as we work together on the urban transportation and
mobility challenges of today and tomorrow. The interoperability of
software and access to data are essential to gaining insights from
disparate sources of information, and the Linux Foundation serves
as the ideal organization for this cross-industry effort. Through
this collaboration and services like HERE XYZ, we are proud to help
build the data specifications and open source technology to improve
urban mobility," said Oliver Fink,
director of HERE XYZ
Interline Technologies
"Joining the Urban Computing
Foundation is an easy decision for Interline Technologies. The
focus areas are like ours: transportation and mobility. Similarly,
we already rely upon and contribute to opensource software, open
datasets and shared data specs. The Linux Foundation as a venue is
ideal," said Drew Dara-Abrams,
principal at Interline Technologies, and head of mobility products
at Mapzen. "Interline is pleased to also participate in the Mapzen
Foundation under the same umbrella. Finally, and most importantly,
Interline and Urban Computing Foundation have similar goals: useful
collaboration between organizations across the private, public and
academic sectors."
Senseable City Labs
"For over 10 years, the MIT
Senseable City Lab has been doing cutting-edge research on how to
use big data to better understand cities. The Urban Computing
Foundation initiative is extremely promising to us, as it aims to
give open and standardized access to an ever-growing number of
urban datasets. We look forward to contributing to its success, as
it could help leapfrog urban science," said Carlo Ratti, director, MIT Senseable City Lab,
and Paolo Santi, research scientist,
MIT Senseable City Lab.
StreetCred Labs
"StreetCred is excited to join the
Urban Computing Foundation to work on open urban mobility. Working
with the Linux Foundation through Mapzen has been a great
experience, and I'm happy to see it branch out into other critical
areas for collaborative innovation," said Randy Meech, CEO, StreetCred Labs and Mapzen
Foundation.
University of California San
Diego
"The Urban Computing project is a natural fit
for UC San Diego's efforts to develop a smart campus with
autonomous transportation options. With almost 70,000 people on
campus every day, we have all the needs of smart city. The UC San
Diego campus is a natural testbed for the Urban Computing platform,
and UC San Diego researchers and students, working in their own
backyard, will be able to contribute to the project and its
results. The Urban Computing project engages the Halicioglu Data
Science Institute led by Prof. Rajesh
Gupta and the Contextual Robotics Institute led by Prof.
Henrik Christensen,"
Todd Hylton, UC San Diego Jacobs
School of Engineering.
About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux
Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the
world's leading home for collaboration on open source software,
open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation's
projects are critical to the world's infrastructure, including
Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more. The Linux Foundation's
methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the
needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create
sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information,
please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses
trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the Linux Foundation,
please visit our trademark usage page at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Media Contact
Jennifer Cloer
reTHINKit Media
jennifer@rethinkitmedia.com
503-867-2304
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/linux-foundation-supports-community-development-to-improve-mobility-transportation-safety-and-infrastructure-with-new-urban-computing-foundation-300850978.html
SOURCE The Linux Foundation