The U.S.-Mexico border region is home to more than 80 million people. Binational cooperation, especially on issues of shared importance, such as transportation, commerce, and the environment, is vital to ensuring economic prosperity and environmental sustainability in both countries. Emerging technologies and other innovations can offer smart solutions that have the potential to address many of the challenges in border communities including infrastructure resilience, and food, energy, and water security. Never has the need been greater for academic institutions, border communities, private industry, non-governmental, and government agencies to work together to identify common technology, water, energy, environmental, and security challenges, and to explore and test smart utility infrastructure solutions along both sides of the border. This project brings together four public universities in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas in collaboration with four universities in Mexico to conduct a series of three workshops to foster collaboration amongst academic institutions, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and industry partners on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue fundamental research, the results of which can benefit communities and economies in both countries.

The workshops will catalyze the ideas, partnerships, and resources needed to foster collaborative, binational research, and open access to data that will inform solutions to regional U.S. and Mexico challenges that take advantage of smart technology. Specifically, the proposed workshops will support the initiation and advancement of convergent, interdisciplinary research relevant to the development of innovative solutions to the most pressing border-region challenges: water-energy security, economic opportunity, education, security, immigration, and crime. Additionally, the workshops and the research activities that flow from them will promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce development on both sides of the border. Ultimately, the research will contribute to improving quality of life for those who live in the border region by potentially lowering energy costs, reducing food scarcity, improving border safety and commerce, and offering better healthcare access to underserved communities. Application of the data and research results of anticipated Alliance projects is anticipated to extend far beyond border communities to other regions with similar infrastructural, environmental, and social concerns.

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.