A Rural Lens on a Research Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure

Abstract: A National Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure is not complete without explicit consideration of the needs of rural communities. While the American population has urbanized, the United States depends on rural communities for agriculture, fishing, forestry, manufacturing and mining. Approximately 20% of the US population lives in rural areas with a skew towards aging adults. Further, nearly 25% of Veterans live in rural America. And yet, when intelligent infrastructure is imagined, it is often done so with implicit or explicit bias towards cities. In this brief we describe the unique opportunities for rural communities and offer an inclusive vision of intelligent infrastructure research. In this paper, we argue for a set of coordinated actions to ensure that rural Americans are not left behind in this digital revolution. These technological platforms and applications, supported by appropriate policy, will address key issues in transportation, energy, agriculture, public safety and health. We believe that rather than being a set of needs, the rural United States presents a set of exciting possibilities for novel innovation benefiting not just those living there, but the American economy more broadly