The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) launched the Open Streets program during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing schools to use the street in front of their building to offer safe outdoor spaces for recess, outdoor learning, lunch, and safe pick-ups and drop-offs. Even with growth, it services only a fraction of NYC's 1,700+ public schools. Dr. Michael Cassidy, a professor at Mount Sinai, is working with DOT to evaluate the health and educational effects of the program, which may support the case for future expansion.

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Annual springtime growth of diatom algae has impacted production efficiency in New York City’s drinking water system. Sometime in the next few years, part of the system will be shut down for repairs, making it critical that the remainder of the system operates at maximum production to meet the city’s water demand. Dr. Andrew Juhl, a professor at Columbia University, is helping the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) investigate the causes of this algal growth and define strategies to mitigate its impact.

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) spends significant resources raking and hauling leaves from the 1,000 acres its buildings occupy. NYCHA piloted a program to save staff time and substitute raking with leaf mulching, but it needed scientific evidence of soil health benefits to justify expansion. Dr. Joshua Cheng of Brooklyn College analyzed soil samples in the mulched vs. raked lawns, which showed that leaf mulching improved most soil health indicators. This research supported NYCHA’s case for investment, helping secure a $400,000 grant from USDA that funded additional mulchers and continued soil analysis.

The New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) hosts a public-facing platform to help New Yorkers search for and locate its programs throughout the city. Launched in 2015, discoverDYCD is now being redesigned. A Fellow led a human-centered design process to improve how parents, youth, and community members search, evaluate, and apply to programs. The Fellow conducted surveys, focus groups, and usability tests to inform interactive prototypes for developer handoff. DYCD leadership approved the designs and internal staff capacity to implement them.

As the nation’s largest municipal public health agency, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) sought to bring attention to lead-containing consumer products—like spices and cookware—identified during lead poisoning investigations. A Fellow developed a prototype platform to aggregate and visualize NYC’s open‑source data on lead-containing products. Already, 16 U.S. jurisdictions have committed to sharing their own data, launching a first‑of‑its‑kind multijurisdictional partnership. Through this, DOHMH aims to encourage corrective action in the products’ countries of origin.

Hennepin County is one of the few counties nationally with a “shelter-all” policy, providing a space for families upon request. From 2023 to early 2025, the county experienced an increase in families using emergency shelter. Complicating and challenging the landscape were families seeking asylum that often prevented them from quickly transitioning to permanent housing. Dr. Ryan Allen, a professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and his research team examined how these changes have shaped the use of Hennepin County’s family shelter system to inform strategies to improve outcomes for both families and the county in the future. Read the full report here.

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office (HCAO) utilizes court diversion, among other strategies, to improve community safety and wellbeing through individual and system accountability. HCAO’s approach aims to improve outcomes for youth and families while simultaneously centering victims and their healing. Dr. Kara Beckman and a UMN Department of Pediatrics team evaluated the efficacy of diversion programs and found that diversion alternatives had a lower one-year recidivism rate than cases prosecuted in the court system. The research resulted in Hennepin County expanding its diversion criteria and programming based on using person-centered rather than offense-centered criteria, while still excluding the most serious offenses from eligibility. Read the full report here.

The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) conducts regular assessments of pavement conditions utilizing a manual inspection process, but the implementation of over 250 miles of protected bike lanes has made inspection more complex, as views are blocked by parked cars or concrete barriers. Dr. Kaan Ozbay and Dr. Jingqin Gao from New York University developed and deployed a vision-based deep learning model using cameras, GPS, and accelerometers to automatically assess pavement conditions. Now DOT is exploring issuing a procurement for a commercial solution, informed by the results of this pilot.

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Libraries have long served as community-level resources to advance health and address disparities with both “drop-in” spaces and structured programming. For youth, these spaces provide opportunities for connection, engagement with positive adult role models, access to resources (e.g., food, technology, education support, reading materials), and more. In collaboration with Hennepin County Libraries, Dr. Rebecca Schlafer, Dr. Amy Gower, and Ingie Osman in the UMN Department of Pediatrics are formally evaluating county library drop-in spaces, focusing on how they promote youth mental health and wellbeing. The full report is forthcoming.

Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of water use in California, yet treated wastewater that could irrigate crops is often discharged without use, due to regulatory barriers. Metropolitan partnered with the Pacific Institute to investigate obstacles and develop a practical guidebook grounded in real case studies to help water managers, regulators, and farmers overcome them. The research found that the most successful reuse projects deliver multiple benefits, such as irrigation enhancement and nutrient management, through early partnerships with stakeholders, providing a replicable model for expanding agricultural reuse.

Metropolitan’s Turf Replacement Program offers cash rebates to homeowners and businesses that replace water-intensive traditional lawns with drought-tolerant native plants, but their full effect had not been measured. Dr. Andrew Marx of PlanetScape AI used aerial imagery to track nearly 800 homes across 20 neighborhoods, measuring how many non-rebated households converted their lawns after seeing a neighbor do it. The research found that for every 100 rebated conversions, an additional 132 nearby homes followed suit, thereby more than doubling the program's water-saving potential.

As Southern California increasingly looks to recycled wastewater as a drinking water source, water agencies need to understand how wastewater treatment affects the performance and cost of advanced purification. Metropolitan partnered with Carollo Engineers and the California State Water Resources Control Board to examine how different wastewater treatment conditions influence downstream purification processes and finished water quality. The research produced a ‘cause-and-effect database,’ a decision support flowchart, and case study documents to help agencies identify the most effective and economical path to potable reuse.

Viruses are a top concern in potable water reuse due to their small size and resistance to disinfection yet water agencies lacked reliable methods to confirm that advanced treatment processes were removing them effectively. Metropolitan partnered with researchers at the University of Arizona to identify and evaluate viral indicators that could serve as proxies for assessing performance across a range of physical treatment technologies. The findings give water agencies and regulators a practical framework for confirming that potable reuse systems are meeting safety standards across diverse operating conditions.