Collaborating with local college students will help PWSA identify new solutions and innovative ideas to apply to projects and programs throughout the organization.

With so much work before us, tapping into the talent of Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Metro21: Smart Cities Institute provides additional support to assist with innovations we may want to explore.

This pairing provides the opportunity to identify real world applications for university research and new technology ideas. The City of Pittsburgh partnered with Metro21 on several projects including predicting commercial fires to better target commercial fire inspections and optimizing snowplow routing. In addition to the City of Pittsburgh, Metro21 also partners with Allegheny County, the Pittsburgh International Airport, and other government agencies.

As part of our involvement in Metro21 we’ll have an opportunity to pitch some of our challenges and CMU will likely approach us with ideas that they think we might be interested in exploring. We are excited for the opportunity to collaborate with CMU and look forward to seeing the creative solutions these students will present.