Does your work require IRB approvals? If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy. If No, explain why you don’t need IRB approval and identify situations when you might need IRB approval.

We do not believe that we will need IRB approval because we do not have the intent to use human subjects in our research. Our goal is to create a smart innovation for the city of Almaty that will enhance citizen’s lives, that could potentially be used in other cities after that. Our work therefore qualifies as research according to the IRB because we will be collecting data, and hopefully adding to generalizable knowledge by publishing our work and making presentations. However, we do not intend to manipulate people in any way or use people to gather specific data in a type of experiment. Because our plan, as of now, is to focus on something along the lines of the environment, infrastructure, heating, or transportation, the data we will be looking at is mostly on how machines or products or the system works. Not so much on people. 

We will, however, be talking to people in Kazakhstan, and citizens of Almaty. If we changed our project idea, and needed to start collecting private information from the citizens of Almaty, then we would need an IRB approval. In addition, if we decided we needed to see how people in Almaty acted differently with our innovation, and needed to collect data on their new behaviors, then we might need IRB approval because we would be using human subjects.

Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations. What supporting evidence will you provide for each point? How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?

For our mid-semester presentations, we will start by explaining that Kazakhstan is a very resource rich country and is very developed. Their cities have been growing significantly over the years. In order to make the cities the most efficient they can be, smart city innovations should be developed to help fix infrastructural, environmental, or overcrowding issues. Coming up with a smart innovation that will effectively work in Almaty, will help make the city more efficient and hopefully be able to expand to other cities in Kazakhstan, or even around the world. Our goal is to develop a device that improves life in Almaty but can generally be applied to other cities around the world that are experiencing this surge of growth. The smart innovation will also be able to improve each citizen’s lives too. The magnitude of which will not be able to be determined until we decide on the exact innovation that will work. 

We will then explain all the research we have done on smart, digital, urban, and in use innovations on parking, pollution, short term travelers, and quality of life. We will describe, with specifics, how certain innovations have been successful in other countries, and how we see that something similar might work in Almaty. If we have been able to get our article published on Engineering for Change by this time, then we will make sure to mention that in our presentation at this point. The importance of the Engineering for Change article is to establish a brand for our project. We want to educate people about the significant roles that small but impactful smart innovations can have on developing cities and countries. 

We will continue by explaining that our project is new, so our goal as of now is to work with our partners in KazNU and AlmaU (name drop), the two major universities in Kazakhstan to figure out potential issues in Almaty that can be improved. We will work with them via Skype calls, and email/texts, to build our relationship and understanding of the city. The use of partners currently in Almaty brings credibility that our project is focussing on social and cultural integration as well as acceptance. At the end of the day our product could be great but it needs to be accepted by Almaty residents to ensure success. 

Once we understand the issues, we will begin to brainstorm solutions and potential innovations that could work. Then over the summer, when we travel to Almaty, we will use that time to prototype our products and continue to search for effective solutions. In the end our presentation will show the process in which we took to determine the reason why we want to introduce a product, what potential benefits would this product have, how will this product improve life in Almaty, and how can we use this same approach to apply our success to another developing city not only in Kazakhstan but around the world.