The George Washington University URSA MAJOR team including Vera Kuklina, Nikolay Shiklomanov, Aman Luthra, Diana Khaziakhmetova, and student Alison Brucevich together with Igor Khodachek from the High North Center visited Fairbanks (Alaska, US) in June to meet local stakeholders and decision makers involved into urban planning and green shift in the Arctic. Another aim was to establish connections and discuss opportunities for organizing a Young Scientists School in 2025. The visit was coordinated with the NNA Collaboratory: Collaborative Research: Arctic Cities: Measuring Urban Sustainability in Transition (MUST) (NSF funded) Project. The mayors of Yellowknife (Canada) and Luleå (Sweden) actively participated in the meetings sharing with URSA MAJOR and MUST teams their extensive experience of governing the Arctic cities.
MUST team also organized several expert meetings with the mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Bryce Ward and with the member of the Borough Assembly Members David Guttenberg & Savannah Fletcher. The meetings were very informative for understanding the decision makers’ perspectives on barriers and opportunities within local power relations of current governance system and the challenges that Arctic cities face on the way to green transition.
The team visited NREL to learn about utilizing new technologies and materials for housing construction in cold regions.
Important role of permafrost in urban development was discussed during the tour in the permafrost tunnel. Participants learned about numerous projects conducted by researchers and engineers interested in permafrost characteristics.
The MUST team organized a meeting with FAST Planning center where they had a very fruitful discussion on smart urban mobility. The academics and practitioners discussed in detail the infrastructure challenges of using electric cars and bicycles during the cold season. While the city does not have smart city-oriented projects as such and benchmark their advances in smart mobility as ten years behind other states, recently Fairbanks has implemented a Signal Interconnect Center for traffic. Experience from Smarter Transport Bodø project shared by Igor Khodachek was very insightful and allowed participants of discussion to find a common ground for many Arctic cities.
Another series of meetings was organized with representatives of Indigenous communities including Denakanagga, Native Movement, and Rural Student Services and Indigenous Studies program in UAF. During these meetings participants discussed the ways of Indigenous-led research and community engagement in different project. In particular, they expressed the need to acknowledge Indigenous knowledge as an important source of data that has to be taken into account when developing smart city technologies.
The green transition agenda has been addressed with a surprising focus on coal that remains being the key energy source for Alaska overall and Fairbanks in particular. Both MUST and URSA MAJOR team members visited the largest in Alaska Usibelli coal mine and the newly built combined heat and power plant that began supplying all electricity and heat for the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus in 2020.
Thanks for advanced land recultivation technologies at the coal mine and fantastically efficient filtering capacity at the power plant, the environmental impact of the energy production is reduced to minimum. In combination with lower transportation costs and transmission losses in comparison to other energy sources, coal becomes a viable alternative even to gas and renewable energy.
Moving further on green energy agenda, the team visited Alaska Center for Energy and Power at University of Alaska Fairbanks and state grid company getting insights on Alaska energy system and future alternatives to fossil fuels and hydrogen projects. The future of Alaska renewable energy will most likely rely on its solar and offshore wind potential while remaining large share of coal and mobile diesel solutions for the remote communities.
Finally, team members met with the Parks and Recreations, who mentioned utilizing different apps for monitoring environmental conditions. They described advantages of using PurpleAir app for monitoring air quality based on which they were making decisions about planning public activities outside in open spaces.
Dr. Shiklomanov a PI on NSF-funded “Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring Network-CALM: Long-term Observations on the Climate-Active Layer-Permafrost System” project and Co-PI on “Rapid Arctic environmental Changes: implications for well-being, resilience and Evolution of Arctic communities” and “Navigating Convergent Pressures on Arctic Development” projects. Dr. Shiklomanov coordinated research and educational activities between these projects and URSA-MAJOR.
Dr. Luthra met with UAF experts Derek Sikes, Curator of Insects / Professor of Entomology, Museum of the North and Christa Mulder, Biology and Wildlife Faculty, UAF to discuss the citizen science initiatives for studying plants and pollinators: how people can contribute to monitoring of climate change affecting subsistence activities such as berry picking and herb gathering.
In general, there was a great interest in prospect of bringing experts and young scientists to explore on-the ground examples of good practices and challenges for smart cities in the Arctic.
