In collaboration with Penn State, this project works to integrate innovations in smart and connected communities to improve garden alleys within the City of Makassar, Indonesia via a synergistic collaboration between US and Indonesian teams and a close partnership with Makassar City. Makassar is striving to become a livable world-class city for a fast-growing, diverse population of 1.7 million people. The ongoing Garden Alley project in the city aims to improve the livability of the city, measured by factors including air-quality, heat index, food security, and social interactions. There are 7520 alleys in Makassar City. To date, Makassar has implemented 40 gardens within 15 of the city’s sub-districts, covering a sizable portion of the city’s alleys. The goal of this research is to catalyze the transformation of Makassar City’s garden alleys into smart environments by deploying a sensor network at representative green allies and conventional allies to collect data related to air quality, microclimates, and other factors, to analyze the heterogeneous data using machine learning techniques, and to then share the data and its insights with city representatives and specific communities within the city.

Pennsylvania State University

University of Vermont REU Program