SCC-PG: Park WiFi as a BRIDGE to Community Resilience

Urban greenspaces are untapped assets in infrastructure improvement and disaster mitigation. Greenspace augmented with broadband infrastructure can serve three crucial functions resulting in individual, infrastructure, and community resilience: (1) an amenity to boost overall park use; (2) an information and safety tool during normal times and mitigator during natural disasters; and (3) as a bridge to propagate WiFi access into contiguous residential neighborhoods - i.e., WiFi to homes without access.

The project proposes a new model to Build Resilience through the Internet and Digital Greenspace Exposure (BRIDGE), leveraging off-the-shelf WiFi technology, novel algorithms, community assets, and local partnerships to lower the cost of greenspace WiFi and ensure long-term governance. BRIDGE adapts a sustainable WiFi infrastructure through direct donations of internet bandwidth from geographically proximate community donors (e.g., schools, churches, community centers).

BRIDGE will lead to measurable, productive shifts in community resilience through stakeholder engagement and collaborative design and management of shared infrastructure. In this proposal, Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission, Department of Parks and Recreation, Prince George’s County (M-NCPPC), partners with the University of Maryland to co-design, deploy, and evaluate a pilot a greenspace WiFi infrastructure system.

BRIDGE’s scalable, replicable, and collaborative process will serve as a viable solution where greenspaces become broadband infrastructure stakeholders, providing governance stability needed for other community partners to join as bandwidth donors and long-term collaborators.

This project enables several socio-technical contributions: (1) a novel, scalable methodology for financing, maintaining, and expanding greenspace WiFi infrastructure via community co-design, management, and long-term support; (2) assessing and expanding resilience indicators including: (a) community capital supported through participatory design and governance processes; (b) education and digital access equity with greenspaces as a new community anchor; and (c) wellness, bolstered by WiFi greenspace access. BRIDGE spearheads actionable research for the community, infrastructure, and individual resilience and creates a viable solution for real-world conditions that can be a model for community resilience across the country.

Moreover, it will advance national K-12 and professional education priorities by actively involving community youth; university students; related technical and professional development programs; and stakeholders who engage in multi-disciplinary research including public safety officers. Broader benefits for Parks include the potential for: (a) public safety interventions; (b) passive counters to inform security patrols; and (c) supplementing educational programming with digital components. Pending a successful pilot, a systemwide rollout of WiFi in all M-NCPPC greenspaces is envisioned.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.