Dive Brief: - Rising home insurance premiums are contributing to housing instability for low- and medium-income households across Texas, a recent study by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University found. - Home insurance costs consume a growing share of median household income in the state, jumping from 2.93% in 2009 to 4.65% in 2024, according to the report. - Nearly 65% of Texas homeowners, more than 7 million, could not afford a median-value home in their county without becoming cost-burdened in 2024, and a 10% increase in home insurance premiums would price out nearly 50,000 additional households. Dive Insight: The number of cost-burdened U.S. homeowners — those who spend more than 30% of their income on housing — grew to a record 20.7 million in 2024, and experts have pointed to soaring home insurance premiums as a contributing factor. “Homeowners insurance has become an increasingly important part of the housing affordability conversation because median insurance costs have increased at a higher rate than home purchase prices,” Steve Sherman, associate director of research at the Kinder Institute's Center for Housing and Neighborhoods, said in a news release. Average monthly home insurance premiums surged 72% between 2019 and 2025, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The impacts of climate change play a role in the uptick, as more than 72 million U.S. homes are at risk of environmental hazards, according to JCHS. In Texas, homeowner insurance premiums are rising faster than general inflation, according to the Kinder Institute. Between 2009 and 2024, home insurance premiums in Texas increased 74%, far outpacing an 11% median household income growth during the same period. That gap widened even more in the past five years, with premiums surging 30%, compared with a 3% median income growth. On a housing panel
Aug 12, 2026 · via smartcitiesdive.com
Dive Brief: - The Federal Transit Administration announced a $1.28 billion capital investment grant on Aug. 7 to add capacity on Utah’s FrontRunner commuter rail service. - The project will add a second track in certain locations, one new train station and 10 additional train sets to increase train frequency along an 83-mile corridor connecting Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo. - The project is in its engineering phase. Construction is expected to start next year and be completed in 2030. Dive Insight: The FTA’s grant announcement does not mean that money will begin flowing to the project immediately. The grant will be subject to completion of “all financial, technical, and legal requirements” and congressional appropriations, the agency said in a press release. Before this announcement, the FTA hadn’t signed any new Capital Investment Grants since the beginning of the Trump administration, according to a July 27 New York Times report. These discretionary grants fund capital investments for heavy rail, commuter rail, light rail, streetcars and bus rapid transit systems. On Tuesday, 42 Democratic senators and representatives sent a letter to FTA Acting Deputy Administrator Matthew Cahill and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought expressing concerns about what they called a “growing backlog of projects.” The letter noted the FrontRunner project, along with pending projects in Boston and Los Angeles. According to the letter, the FTA “currently has access to more than $1.9 billion in unobligated and unallocated funds” for CIG-eligible projects. “We are very concerned that delaying the CIG project pipeline, while advancing only the Utah project, is potentially rooted in partisan political considerations, which could further violate statutory requirements,” the letter states. Congress is working on the next multi-year surface transportation legislation. Although the House put forward a five-year, $580 billion bill in May, it’s unlikely
Aug 12, 2026 · via smartcitiesdive.com
Dive Brief: - Boeing is selling three of its subsidiaries to Archer Aviation in exchange for a minority stake in the electric aircraft startup, according to a securities filing Monday. - Archer has agreed to acquire Wisk Aero, a maker of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft; drone company Insitu; and air traffic software firm Skygrid. Boeing’s stake in Archer will amount to 19.75% of Class A shares with options to buy more shares over the next four years, according to the filing. - Boeing has also agreed to invest up to $55 million in stock in Archer’s next funding round, any time before March 31, 2027. The sale is expected to close by the end of 2026. Dive Insight: The pending sale allows Boeing to prioritize its commercial, defense and global services, focusing on safety and quality of its plane manufacturing processes. In 2025, the plane titan sold a portion of its digital aviation software business unit to private equity software firm Thoma Bravo for $10.55 billion. The company also reacquired fuselage supplier Spirit Aerosystems for $8.4 billion, while also selling some of its assets to rival Airbus in an effort to comply with global government requirements. In addition to Boeing’s stake in Archer, the agreement also involves the two companies collaborating on improving and developing new products, Archer CEO and Chairman Adam Goldstein said during a second quarter earnings call Monday. Once the deal closes, Archer will own the Wisk intellectual property. The company will share Wisk’s autonomous flight technology with Boeing for its next-generation commercial and defense aircraft, according to the press release. Goldstein credits Brian Yutko, vice president of product development for Boeing’s commercial plane segment, for driving the business relationship between the two entities. Yutko previously served as Wisk’s CEO. “This transaction is a win-win
Aug 12, 2026 · via smartcitiesdive.com
Civic digital twin? This Italian city shows why data without democracy is just a map By Zenith Wong Bologna's upcoming civic digital twin will combine data with citizens' lived experiences to help the city make more inclusive urban planning decisions. Stefania Paolazzi (left), Innovation Manager at the Municipality of Bologna, and Marco Pistore (right), Director of the Digital Society Center at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, are helping shape Bologna’s civic digital twin. Images: European Alternatives and Fondazione Bruno Kessler. There will never be one model citizen for city governments to base their urban planning decisions on. Two people could be in the same city, but develop diverging impressions of it because of their different backgrounds and expectations. "If I don't understand this, how can I make the city well-aligned with the expectations of all citizens?", says Marco Pistore, director of the Digital Society Center at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), an Italian applied research institute, to GovInsider. This gap between individual experience and city planning is why the Municipality of Bologna in Italy is looking to develop a socially-focused digital twin, expected to launch in December 2026. A digital twin is a real-time digital replica of the city that combines data on areas such as mobility, energy use, weather, and public services to support policymaking. Since research and development began in September 2023, the project has focused on making those datasets more representative of the city's diverse communities, giving policymakers a stronger evidence base for decision-making. Attention to diversity and inclusivity are not something extra, but principles the city wants to embed in mainstream decision-making, says the municipality's innovation manager, Stefania Paolazzi. She adds: "We really think that if you lack the comprehension of the human dimension of a city, you would never be able to have a complete digital twin." The
Aug 12, 2026 · via govinsider.asia
Recorded Future’s Insikt Group has released its CVE report for July 2026, identifying 85 high-impact vulnerabilities that it says Australia and New Zealand organisations should prioritise for remediation. The group said 36 of the 85 received a “Very Critical” Recorded Future Risk Score. Insikt Group said the July total represented a 44% increase from the previous month. It said the vulnerabilities listed were “actively exploited or operationally weaponised” during July and affected products from 61 vendors, with Microsoft accounting for about 12% of the vulnerabilities. The report also pointed to ongoing exploitation of older vulnerabilities, with 14 of the 85 at least five years old and the oldest approximately 18 years old. Insikt Group said the fastest observed time from public disclosure to reported exploitation was less than one day. Among the trends highlighted, Insikt Group said “China-nexus activity” showed interest in turning edge infrastructure into operational relay capacity. It cited activity involving the exploitation of vulnerabilities including CVE-2020-22653, CVE-2020-22658, and CVE-2023-25717 to compromise Ruckus devices and expand a relay network, alongside the use of compromised devices as relay infrastructure in other campaigns. The report said email, document and collaboration platforms were targeted for espionage and payload delivery, describing activity involving vulnerabilities including CVE-2018-0802 and CVE-2024-42009, and attempts to exploit CVE-2025-49113. It also referenced campaigns abusing CVE-2025-66376, CVE-2026-42897 and CVE-2025-9491 to deliver malware and execute post-exploitation activity. Insikt Group said 57 of the 85 vulnerabilities enabled remote code execution, including flaws affecting Microsoft, Fortinet, Langflow, ServiceNow, and WordPress and Joomla ecosystems, as well as internet-facing security appliances and embedded network devices. It also said it identified public proof-of-concept exploits and scanners for 60 of the 85 vulnerabilities.
Aug 11, 2026 · via australiancybersecuritymagazine.com.au
Amy Lestition Burke exited her role as executive director and CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America on Monday, the organization told Waste Dive. She led the organization for nearly three years. Carolyn Muller, currently SWANA's vice president of industry engagement, will serve as interim CEO while the organization conducts a national search for a permanent leader, per a news release. SWANA aims to have a permanent CEO in place by the end of the year. Burke joined SWANA in November 2023, and she was previously vice president of industry solutions at the Consumer Brands Association. During her tenure with SWANA, she helped guide the organization’s work to position industry members as employers of choice for a younger and more diverse workforce. Burke said during a 2024 interview with Waste Dive that she was excited to helm the organization amid a shift in focus from disposal to responsible resource management. “I was brought here to be proactive and to be that change agent to move the profession and the industry forward,” she said at the time. The organization said Monday that Burke led and helped rebuild SWANA's membership during a period of transition. "We are grateful for her leadership, dedication, and the many contributions she has made to both SWANA and the solid waste industry. We sincerely thank Amy for her service and wish her every success in her future endeavors," SWANA wrote in its release. The departure is not expected to have an impact on SWANA’s mission or priorities, Lynsey Baer, the organization’s president, said in an emailed statement. The organization is "committed to its programs and to hosting RCon," its new flagship event, which replaced Wastecon and its Soar technical conferences for the first time last year. This year, RCon is being held Sept. 29-Oct. 2
Aug 11, 2026 · via wastedive.com
Dive Brief: - ESG data management and software company Measurabl signed a deal Wednesday with fintech platform Inveniam to increase access to sustainability data used to evaluate commercial real estate assets. - The partnership will allow users of Measurabl — which tracks sustainability data for the commercial real estate sector — to use Inveniam’s artificial intelligence-powered data infrastructure and capabilities, according to a press release. - The companies said sustainability data has become “increasingly central to how commercial real estate assets are valued, financed, operated, and managed,” and the collaboration seeks to address the “demand for verifiable, trusted, secure, and connected” data. Dive Insight: Measurabl and Inveniam said the deal aims to turn what is currently unstructured and fragmented information that is scattered across leases, utility bills, compliance filings, engineering reports, loan documents and appraisals into verifiable sustainability data. This data can then be used to better evaluate commercial real estate assets. Measurabl said the collaboration will provide its users with better quality data; access to a broader range of sustainability-focused insights; enhanced governance; and help benchmark real estate assets and portfolio performance across the globe, in addition to reducing manual work through automation. “By combining the strengths of our two platforms, we're helping our customers transform fragmented sustainability information into trusted, secure, and connected data that remains under their ownership and control, enabling better business decisions today while creating the foundation for intelligent automation and AI,” Measurabl CEO Maureen Waters said in an Aug. 5 release. The deal will build on the sustainability data platform’s insights on real estate assets spanning over 28 billion square feet across 97 countries and Inveniam’s technology, which tracks more than $200 billion in credentialed private market assets. The companies said the collaboration is also designed to improve AI governance as it is being
Aug 11, 2026 · via facilitiesdive.com
Collecting rainwater from rooftops and using it to spray buildings during hot weather could help cities cut air conditioning use, lower urban temperatures and lessen the impact of heatwaves, according to new research from The University of Manchester. Cities around the world are facing rising temperatures, putting pressure on public health, infrastructure and energy systems. As people rely more on air conditioning to stay cool, energy demand increases and waste heat released from buildings can make urban areas even hotter. Urban watering technologies are becoming important ways for reducing extreme heat in cities, but their use is often limited by the availability of water. In the study, published in Earth’s Future, researchers used process-based numerical simulations and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to test a system that stores rainwater collected from rooftops and automatically sprays it onto buildings during hot weather. Using Tokyo as their case study, they found that cooling rooftops, the system reduced the amount of energy needed for air conditioning. The cooler roofs transferred less heat into buildings, while lower air conditioning use meant less waste heat was released into the city. Together, these effects helped reduce urban temperatures, cutting the number of heatwave days overall and lessening the intensity of extreme heat events. Lead author Dr Zhonghua Zheng, Co-Lead for Environmental Data Science & AI at Manchester Environmental Research Institute (MERI) and Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Data Science and Environmental Analytics at The University of Manchester, said: “Cities around the world are facing growing challenges from extreme heat. Air conditioning can help keep people safe and comfortable, but it also consumes large amounts of energy and releases additional heat into the urban environment. “Our study shows that harvesting rainwater from roofs and using it strategically for cooling could provide a practical way to reduce both energy demand
Aug 11, 2026 · via envirotecmagazine.com
AI Intelligence Briefing — August 11, 2026 • Open-weight AI models are catching up to the frontier. The safety gap remains. — A new SaferAI report finds Z.ai's open-weight GLM-5.2 approaches frontier AI capabilities in cyber and bio domains while refusing none of the offensive tasks it was given, renewing concerns that powerful open models could outpace governance. 🔗 Graph: AI Security, Model Agnosticism, AI Governance 📅 Published: 2026-08-04 📰 https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/04/open-weight-ai-models-are-catching-up-to-the-frontier-the-safety-gap-remains/ 📌 Key takeaways: • GLM-5.2, China's Z.ai open-weight model, is only months behind OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 on cyber and bio capabilities, yet refused zero offensive cyber or biology tasks in SaferAI's evaluation. • Once weights are downloaded, safety measures become unenforceable — users can remove safeguards, fine-tune, or alter system prompts on their own hardware with no oversight. • SaferAI found hundreds of universal jailbreaks in frontier models (Grok 4.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro) using combined techniques like roleplaying and authority impersonation, but closed-model safeguards at least slow attackers; open-weight models offer no such friction. • For UCSD's TritonAI, this reinforces the case for hosted gateway architectures (LiteLLM) where safety controls remain enforceable — open-weight models can be deployed inside the firewall with governance, but downloading weights to endpoints removes institutional control. • Watch: Pre-training data filtering emerges as a partial mitigation — removing offensive cyber/bio content before training rather than relying on post-hoc refusals, though this is far harder for cybersecurity than for biology since coding and hacking share foundational skills. 💡 Signal: The open-weight vs. closed-model safety gap is becoming a first-order enterprise risk consideration, not just a policy debate. For institutions running hybrid AI strategies, the control plane (gateway, API, monitoring) is now the primary safety mechanism — the model weights alone can't be trusted to self-govern. • 3 AI-Related Questions for Notre
Aug 11, 2026 · via buttondown.com
Five mobility innovators convene in Chattanooga for six weeks to make industry connections Thanks to The Company Lab (CO.LAB), these founders are building solutions that are reshaping how people, goods, energy, and data move. The Company Lab (CO.LAB) in Chattanooga is welcoming its second round of founders for its second accelerator program of the year. This time, each founder is focused on mobility: the solutions that move people, goods, energy, and data. Over the six-week programming period, the startups will work alongside CO.LAB’s corporate partners, mentors, investors, and regional leaders to pressure-test their ideas, connect with potential customers, and pursue real-world opportunities. “Chattanooga gives startups something incredibly valuable: a city where innovation can move beyond the pitch deck. With world-class infrastructure, industry partners, and real-world test beds, founders can learn faster, build stronger solutions, and create meaningful pathways to commercialization,” said CO.LAB CEO Tasia Malakasis in her cohort announcement. Meet the Mobility Cohort - Endeavor Composites, Inc. transforms carbon fiber manufacturing waste into high-performance composite materials that help manufacturers reduce costs, minimize waste, and improve sustainability without sacrificing performance. - Seeteria uses existing warehouse cameras and AI-powered software to provide real-time operational visibility that helps distribution centers improve efficiency, reduce delays, and increase throughput without adding new hardware. - Cybership provides an all-in-one warehouse management platform that helps fulfillment operators streamline inventory, orders, shipping, and warehouse operations with enterprise-level capabilities designed for small and mid-sized businesses. - Surge transforms urban infrastructure into sensor and edge computing nodes, providing privacy-preserving, real-time data for autonomous mobility, smart cities, logistics, and infrastructure operators - Meridian gives freight brokerages a real-time view of their business by connecting data across transportation, CRM, financial, and HR systems. Leaders can ask questions in plain language and get answers in seconds without needing analysts or custom reports. Teknovation
Aug 11, 2026 · via teknovation.biz
Abstract Biometric recognition is crucial for secure and reliable access control in high-security systems that include surveillance, law enforcement, and smart cities. Though the Deep Learning (DL) models present exceptional performance in biometric recognition, a few challenges faced by biometric recognition are revealing an individual’s identity when stolen and falsifying legal documents, passports or criminal records. To alleviate these kinds of issues, this work proposes a new multimodal biometric authentication model for providing recognition using fingerprint and finger vein images. Initially, both images undergo pre-processing by an Adaptive Weiner Filter to discard the noise from the images. Later, the minutiae points are detected by Hit-or-Miss Transformation, and then the authentication phase is performed by SqueezeNet. The SqueezeNet is trained with the Stock Exchange Regime Algorithm (SERA). Similarly, the finger vein images are forwarded to the pre-processing phase to remove the noise, which is then followed by vein extraction that is implemented using Repeated Line Tracking. Here, the output attained from the vein extraction phase is given to the feature extraction phase that uses grid-based location to form features, and then it is forwarded to the authentication process, which is done by a Deep Neuro Fuzzy Network (DNFN). Finally, after the authentication process, the outcomes are being trained by the proposed Stock Exchange Regime Algorithm (SERA), integrating both Stock Exchange Trading Optimization (SETO) and Flow Regime Algorithm (FRA). The outputs obtained from SqueezeNet and DNFN are combined by Motyka similarity to determine the outcome. The SERA-based SqueezeNet+DNFN model demonstrates strong performance across multiple evaluation metrics, achieving an accuracy of 94.5%, sensitivity of 91.3%, specificity of 95.1%, an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.078, a False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of 0.089, and a False Rejection Rate (FRR) of 0.083. These results correspond specifically to the combined fingerprint and finger vein modality using
Aug 11, 2026 · via nature.com
For many, last week’s cyberattacks on water systems throughout the U.S. was a wake-up call. Many municipal water systems are sitting ducks for hackers. But experts say there’s plenty that operators can do to protect city water. “The systems are unprotected because they are misconfigured,” Annie Fixler, director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Smart Cities Dive. “They are configured for ease of access without security in mind.” When water systems were digitized in the 1990s and 2000s, manual operators were replaced with programmable logic controllers, internet-facing computers that monitor input signals from sensors to control output devices like motors and valves, Fixler explained. But the systems were configured to make it easy for operators “without thinking that some malicious actor might want to use that same access to sabotage systems,” she said. ”While they could and should be behind layers of firewalls, authentication pathways and access controls, they are not set up that way because they were set up quickly or by someone who was not familiar with cybersecurity concerns or by a third party who similarly wasn't thinking about the security aspect and said, ‘Here you go. Here's your remote access. You're all good to go. Bye.’ We are now paying for the lack of investment.” Many municipal water systems, especially in smaller cities, lack the staff to focus on things like firewalls and cybersecurity because “keeping the water on is their main goal,” Lessie Skiba, deputy managing director for the Cyber Readiness Institute, told Smart Cities Dive. More than 97% of the nation’s 156,000 public water systems serve fewer than 10,000 customers; many of those have aging systems and operate with minimal IT or cybersecurity personnel, a Cyber Readiness Institute report found. “Their capacity to respond to a cyber
Aug 11, 2026 · via smartcitiesdive.com
University of Michigan Project Changes Course Due to Regulations The University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute’s Mcity is an advanced mobility research center. As a public-private partnership among the university, the city of Ann Arbor and dozens of other government and industry entities, it’s been focused on connected, automated technologies that are the backbone of intelligent transportation. While its work continues, regulatory shifts have forced a change. “We stood up dedicated short-range communication, a 5.9-megahertz dedicated band. Then the FCC came along and truncated our band and said you cannot use dedicated short-range communications anymore,” says Debra Bezzina, managing director for the Ann Arbor Connected Environment. “We had to recall all of the vehicles that we had deployed, and at that time, we had about 1,650 of them,” she says. “They all had to come back in and have their devices taken off. All 75 of the roadside units that were deployed in Ann Arbor had to be turned off.” DISCOVER: Modern networking solutions can enable smart city research. The research continues, but in a new form. “We have transitioned to a cellular-based solution: Cellular V2X, Vehicle to Everything. It’s still in the same band and it’s still direct communications, but this is based on cellular,” Bezzina says. Funding has come in the form of U.S. Department of Transportation grants, including one for the Smart Intersections Project that delivered $10 million in federal funding and a $10 million cost share. “That was to equip 21 intersections with C-V2X technology and perception systems, a combination of video cameras and LIDAR,” she says. Another project, the Ann Arbor Connected Environment Reimagined (or ACE 2.0) got about $12.5 million, with $10 million in federal funding and a $2.5 million cost share. “Then we have a third, smaller project, part of the city of
Aug 10, 2026 · via edtechmagazine.com
📝 Summary UTM strengthened its strategic partnership with China through the Ambassador GlobaLecture 2026, featuring Chinese Ambassador Ouyang Yujing, who emphasized the importance of innovation and collaboration in addressing global challenges. The event highlighted UTM’s commitment to advancing global partnerships, innovation, and academic diplomacy, with the university’s Vice-Chancellor stressing the need for universities to translate international partnerships into tangible solutions that improve people’s lives. The lecture and subsequent discussions showcased UTM’s expanding partnerships with Chinese universities and its role in supporting Malaysia’s international higher education agenda. KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 5 – Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), through UTM International Kuala Lumpur, reaffirmed its commitment to advancing global partnerships, innovation, and academic diplomacy by hosting the Ambassador GlobaLecture (AGL) China 2026, featuring His Excellency Ouyang Yujing, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China to Malaysia. Held at the Seminar Hall, Menara Razak, UTM Kuala Lumpur, the programme brought together more than 100 participants comprising diplomats, university leaders, academics, researchers, and local and international students. The lecture, entitled Innovation, Partnership & Shared Prosperity: China-Malaysia Community with a Shared Future in a Changing World, served as a timely platform to explore how higher education institutions can strengthen bilateral cooperation in addressing emerging global challenges through innovation, research excellence and talent development. The Ambassador GlobaLecture is a flagship initiative of UTM International that promotes academic diplomacy by connecting the diplomatic community with academia to encourage meaningful dialogue on international affairs, education, science, technology and sustainable development. Since its inception, the platform has strengthened UTM’s role as a trusted convenor of global conversations while expanding opportunities for collaboration between Malaysia and strategic international partners. Delivering the lecture, Ouyang Yujing emphasised that innovation is becoming a defining pillar of China-Malaysia relations. While bilateral cooperation has traditionally centred on trade and infrastructure development, both countries
Aug 10, 2026 · via news.utm.my
New City Clean Air Hub to help city leaders deliver clean air and healthy communities What’s new: EDF and partners at the Community Data Health Initiative (CDHI) just launched the City Clean Air Hub — a one-stop resource to help Mayors and other city leaders chart a path to cleaner air. The hub connects local leaders in and out of government with the data, analytical tools, policy insights, best practices and implementation guidance they need to take action. It also allows users to look up the health impacts of air pollution in their U.S. city, county or metro area, providing a localized starting place for understanding the problem and designing solutions. We launched the hub at a webinar (full recording above) featuring mayors and other local leaders from cities large and small sharing their experiences at various stages of their clean air journeys, including: - Mayor Donya L. Sartor, PhD. of Jonesboro, GA - Mayor Roderick D. Hampton of Haynesville, LA - Trisha Stein, Chief Strategy Officer, Detroit, MI - Dr. David Margolius, MD, Director of Public Health, Cleveland, OH - Komal Sheth, MPH, Senior Analyst, Houston Health Department The City Clean Air Hub marks the most recent phase of EDF’s work as part of CDHI, which seeks to expand cities’ capacity to take on environmental challenges that directly affect people’s health — starting with air pollution and extreme heat. CDHI is a collaboration between the Data-Smart City Solutions program at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, Environmental Defense Fund, the African American Mayors Association and Meharry Medical College. Why it matters: Air pollution is a silent and often invisible killer — the second leading risk factor for early death worldwide. It also shares many of the same root causes with climate change and is being worsened by
Aug 10, 2026 · via blogs.edf.org
Newswise — Spend just one day in New York City, and you might be transferring subway trains, hailing taxis, calling Ubers, sitting in traffic, or scrolling the streets on Google Maps for hours. Each one of these interactions constitutes a decision and data point, produced by just one person. Multiply that by a population of 8 million more, on top of tourists, and the busiest city in the U.S. generates millions upon millions of decisions and data points every single day. New artificial intelligence models that parse through that vast sea of human-generated data, however, could further expedite and smooth the decision-making process, from commute times to traffic safety. This is the crux of Binghamton University, State University of New York Assistant Professor Yingxue Zhang’s recent National Science Foundation CAREER Award, for which she won a five-year grant of $584,649. “In urban life, people make decisions every day. Taxi drivers want to pick up passengers, and if people want to go to work, they need to switch to different public transits,” said Zhang, a faculty member at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s School of Computing. “They make decisions every day, every hour, every second. We want to model this kind of process to make the whole decision-making process more efficient and effective.” The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious distinction, given to early-career faculty who are poised to become the future leaders in research and education in their respective fields. Zhang’s project will be the first to use a particular type of deep learning technique, called offline reinforcement learning, to wrangle the ever-changing dynamics of urban life and spaces. “This technique has never been applied in the urban domain, which is a spatial-temporal domain. The data is spatial-temporal data. We have spatial correlations, and
Aug 10, 2026 · via newswise.com
KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 10): ITMAX System Bhd (KL:ITMAX) has secured approval from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) for a RM134.3 million project to develop communications infrastructure and digital connectivity for the Kota Kinabalu Smart City project. According to its Bursa filing on Monday, the smart city integrated systems and solutions provider has also been designated as the universal service provider for the project, which will see the group design, supply and install and commission the infrastructure. The project will be carried out over an implementation period of up to 24 months, followed by a five-year operational period upon completion. The service period commenced on Aug 6. The latest award expands ITMAX’s smart-city business, with its systems supporting urban monitoring and services through digital infrastructure. ITMAX said the project is expected to boost earnings and marks its entry into East Malaysia as it expands nationwide. ITMAX managing director and CEO William Tan Wei Lun said the group sees significant growth potential in East Malaysia, where smart city development remains at an early stage and demand for intelligent digital infrastructure continues to grow. Under the project, ITMAX will deploy a Network Operation Command Centre and Smart Video Surveillance System across Kota Kinabalu, aimed at improving public safety and the city's operational efficiency. “As one of Malaysia’s key tourism destinations, we believe Kota Kinabalu will benefit from smarter urban infrastructure that supports sustainable city development and the continued growth of its tourism economy,” Tan said. The approval does not require the consent of ITMAX shareholders or any other relevant authorities, while none of its directors or major shareholders has any direct or indirect interest in the project. Shares of ITMAX closed up half a sen or 1.09% at RM4.65 on Monday, valuing the group at around RM4.83 billion.
Aug 10, 2026 · via theedgemalaysia.com
The robotaxi wars are heating up. Waymo is expected to end its partnership with Uber in Atlanta and Austin, Texas, in 2028, according to multiple media reports. Waymo robotaxis have been available in those cities through the Uber app since 2025. The two ride-hailing companies dissolved their three-year partnership in Phoenix in May, according to the Financial Times. Uber plans to begin robotaxi rides using Lucid vehicles in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area this year, CEO and Director Dara Khosrowshahi said during the company’s Aug. 5 earnings call. Uber plans to source up to 20,000 Lucid electric vehicles outfitted with self-driving technology and has ordered 10,000 Rivian robotaxis with an option for 40,000 more to be deployed beginning in 2028. What does that mean for cities and the outlook for robotaxi companies? Uber recognizes the challenge that Waymo and autonomous vehicles present and is “trying to protect their business,” Arthur D. Little Partner Frank McCleary told Smart Cities Dive. While Uber operates in many more cities, Waymo is the leader in robotaxi operations. Uber wouldn’t be investing in robotaxis “if they didn't see long-term that [Waymo] could affect their revenue,” he said. Building out AV fleets comes with a high capital cost, McCleary said. Driver-based services like Uber and Lyft shift vehicle costs onto the driver-owner and allow the number of vehicles available at any given time to rise and fall with demand. Drivers “know when they can make the most money, and they're going to work those hours,” McCleary said. They can also do food or package deliveries “through Uber Eats or DoorDash or something else.” Khosrowshahi said last year that robotaxis could generate higher revenue than human drivers, but he envisions “a hybrid future, seamlessly integrating human drivers and autonomous vehicles into a single marketplace,
Aug 10, 2026 · via smartcitiesdive.com
CBDC for Smart Cities: Payments, Identity, and Public Service Innovation CBDC for smart cities is not just a payments story. The real value shows up when state-backed digital money connects to digital identity, public data systems, transport networks, and municipal services. Done well, a central bank digital currency can make city payments faster, improve access for residents who are poorly served by banks, and give governments better tools for targeted public programs. Done badly, it becomes a surveillance-heavy payment layer that residents will not trust. That trade-off matters. Smart city infrastructure already touches daily life: buses, parking, utilities, permits, health services, subsidies, and local taxes. Adding CBDC to that stack means the design choices stop being abstract central bank policy. They affect the line at a metro gate and the way a low-income household receives an energy rebate. What Is a CBDC in a Smart City Context? A central bank digital currency is a digital form of national fiat currency issued or supervised by a central bank. It differs from Bitcoin, Ether, or private stablecoins because it is sovereign money, generally designed to carry the trust and legal status of cash while working inside digital systems. CBDCs usually fall into two groups: - Retail CBDCs: Used by people and businesses for everyday payments through wallets, mobile apps, cards, or connected devices. - Wholesale CBDCs: Used by financial institutions for interbank settlement, securities settlement, and specialized financial market use cases. For smart cities, retail CBDCs are the practical starting point. They can sit inside citizen wallets, public transport apps, merchant payment systems, and government service portals. Wholesale CBDCs still matter, especially for treasury and settlement efficiency, but they do not touch most city residents directly. Think of a CBDC as public money in electronic form, usually recorded on a ledger controlled
Aug 10, 2026 · via blockchain-council.org
How Budderfly & Schneider Are Revamping Civic Energy Systems According to the US Department of Energy, power cuts and blackouts cost the US economy an eye-watering US$150bn every single year, with the average customer experiencing around five and a half hours without power over the course of a year. Michigan is among the worst states when it comes to outages. From 2002 to 2022, Michigan experienced more power cuts than all but three US states, registering 620 major events over that time according to Payless Power. That data makes for fairly grim reading, especially considering Michigan is at less risk than many US states when it comes to natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. To counteract these problems going forward, local governments are increasingly turning to Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) providers from the private sector to completely overhaul their energy systems. Cadillac, a small city about 50 miles east of Lake Michigan, is one such example. The city, which is home to just over 10,000 people, has just partnered up with Budderfly and Schneider Electric to revamp the power infrastructure as seven of its most important municipal sites including City Hall and a wastewater treatment facility. The best thing for the residents? Budderfly is funding the US$4.4m project itself, meaning it won't cost the local taxpayers anything up front to bolster their grid. The energy financing model Under Budderfly's EaaS structure, the city repays the investment through the energy savings the new systems generate, rather than through direct capital spending. This approach allows Cadillac to budget with more certainty while keeping energy-dependent services such as water treatment and emergency response running through disruptions. "This project is about taking a smarter, more resilient approach to serving our community," says Marcus Peccia, City Manager, City of Cadillac. "We're able to modernise critical infrastructure,
Aug 10, 2026 · via energydigital.com