Related papers: Sorting Out New York City's Trash Problem
There is a lot of waste in an industrial environment that could cause harmful effects to both the products and the workers resulting in product defects, itchy eyes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, etc. While automative cleaning…
Problem definition: Traditionally, New York City's top 8 public schools have selected candidates solely based on their scores in the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). These scores are known to be impacted by socioeconomic…
Besides air pollution and commuter stress, traffic congestions also lead to loss of productivity, increase in delay, vehicle operating cost, and accidents. To assuage these issues, several logistics companies are planning to launch air…
Despite public motivation to recycle, significant barriers hinder effective household recycling in the UK. Decentralised local authority waste management creates citizen confusion and "wishcycling" (disposing of non-recyclable items in…
In this paper, we propose a novel, computational efficient, dynamic ridesharing algorithm. The beneficial computational properties of the algorithm arise from casting the ridesharing problem as a linear assignment problem between fleet…
Medical waste, i.e. waste produced during medical activities in hospitals, clinics and laboratories, represents hazardous waste whose management involves special care and high costs. However, this kind of waste contains a significant…
Owing to human labor shortages, the automation of labor-intensive manual waste-sorting is needed. The goal of automating waste-sorting is to replace the human role of robust detection and agile manipulation of waste items with robots. To…
Taxicabs are a critical aspect of the public transit system in New York City. The yellow cabs that are ubiquitous in Manhattan are as iconic as the city's subway system, and in recent years green taxicabs were introduced by the city to…
The increasing production of waste, driven by population growth, has created challenges in managing and recycling materials effectively. Manual waste sorting is a common practice; however, it remains inefficient for handling large-scale…
We examine an important combinatorial challenge in clearing clutter using a mobile robot equipped with a manipulator, seeking to compute an optimal object removal sequence for minimizing the task completion time, assuming that each object…
Approximately 4.2 million youth and young adults experience homelessness each year in the United States and lack of basic necessities puts this population at high-risk of being trafficked or exploited. Although all runaway and homeless…
Shared resources enhance productivity yet at the same time provide channels for biological and digital contamination, turning physical or digital hygiene into a cooperation dilemma prone to free-riding. Here we introduce a game of…
Ride-sharing - the combination of multiple trips into one - may substantially contribute towards sustainable urban mobility. It is most efficient at high demand locations with many similar trip requests. However, here we reveal that…
Municipal solid waste management is a major challenge for nowadays urban societies, because it accounts for a large proportion of public budget and, when mishandled, it can lead to environmental and social problems. This work focuses on the…
Homelessness in American cities is becoming an ever more prominent issue, but its causes remain contested, ranging from mental health and substance abuse to housing affordability and local labor markets. To shed light on this issue, I…
Emergency services play a crucial role in safeguarding human life and property within society. In this paper, we propose a network-based methodology for calculating transportation access between emergency services and the broader community.…
Our research aims at developing intelligent systems to reduce the transportation-related energy expenditure of a large city by influencing individual behavior. We introduce COPTER - an intelligent travel assistant that evaluates multi-modal…
There are 50 billion pieces of litter in the U.S. alone. Grass fields contribute to this problem because picnickers tend to leave trash on the field. We propose building a robot that can autonomously navigate, identify, and pick up trash in…
Bike-sharing is becoming increasingly popular as an urban traffic mode while increasing the affordability, flexibility, and reliability of interconnected public transportation systems (i.e., interconnected light rail, buses, micro-mobility,…
Urban food delivery services have become an integral part of daily life, yet their mobility and environmental externalities remain poorly addressed by planners. Most studies neglect whether consumers pay enough to internalize the broader…