The future of city infrastructure was the topic of a lecture by James H. Garrett Jr, the dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Garrett outlined Metro21, a smart cities initiative that brings together widely different disciplines from Carnegie Mellon. Metro21 looks at how technology can improve infrastructure by targeting maintenance and preventing costly disruptions.

“A city is a system of systems, and Metro21 looks at how these systems operate individually and how they interact with one another,” said Garrett. “Smart systems will improve the quality of metropolitan life.”

Metro21 proposes ways to sense conditions, collect data, and analyze it to create predictive models. This information will allow cities to detect problems early on, before causing large and expensive amounts of damage.

The lecture was the inaugural Paul P. Christiano Distinguished Lecture in Engineering, named in honor of the former provost of Carnegie Mellon who fostered cross-disciplinary education and research.

“Paul Christiano helped shape Carnegie Mellon University as we know it today,” said Ilker Baybars, dean and CEO of CMU-Q, “so it is fitting that this first lecture in his honor is delivered by James Garrett, a former student and colleague of his.”

Norene Christiano, the late Paul Christiano’s wife, attended the lecture.