Data. Knowledge. Public service.
Turning city knowledge into better public services.
Since 2012, our team and RMDS community have worked with city partners to apply research methods, data science, and AI to public-service challenges. CityAI brings this experience together to help cities anticipate needs, strengthen environmental resilience, and serve their communities.
Explore Our City Work Partner With UsBetter predictions matter when they lead to better services, stronger preparedness, and practical benefits for residents.
CityAI is an initiative of GrmdsAI, a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We connect city priorities with technical expertise, community knowledge, education, and responsible AI implementation. Our work spans predicting service demands, optimizing parking, managing risks, and building data science and AI capabilities.
Our approach: AI + Holistic Computation™ + Human Experts
Use historical records and current conditions to estimate demand, support resource planning, and help staff respond to changing community needs.
Apply data analysis and predictive methods to understand parking patterns, improve planning, and make everyday city services more responsive.
Connect risk forecasts with practical preparedness and service delivery for challenges such as extreme heat, wildfire smoke, flooding, and energy resilience.
Help officials, staff, researchers, students, and community partners build practical skills through training, conferences, workshops, and collaborative projects.
Our experience combines applied projects, research collaboration, professional education, and the RMDS community's contributions to city innovation.
SINCE 2012
Our team and community have engaged in city-focused work involving Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Riverside, with applications in service-demand prediction, parking optimization, risk management, and data science and AI education.
2019–2021 | PASADENA
The IM DATA conference series connected researchers, practitioners, organizations, and the Pasadena & Glendale community around data science and AI. These activities supported professional learning, collaboration, and discussion of practical applications.
2020 | LOS ANGELES
In partnership with the City of Los Angeles, RMDS Lab and the RMDS community organized the 2020 COVID-19 Computational Challenge. Participating teams developed approaches to assess and communicate infection risk, leading to a citywide COVID-19 risk map deployed to serve Los Angeles.
The initiative brought together city needs, scientific modeling, and community participation to make complex risk information more useful to residents and decision-makers.
Related coverage: USC Viterbi on the challenge and winning risk model | Risk-estimation research from the winning team
2024 | RESEARCH RECOGNITION
Dr. Alex Liu was among the researchers who received the American Meteorological Society's 2024 Banner I. Miller Award, recognizing contributions to understanding tropical cyclone rapid intensification and advancing machine learning toward operational forecasting.
2025 | RIVERSIDE
Our work with the City of Riverside included new energy development projects, extending our city engagement to energy-related opportunities and local development needs.
Cities hold valuable knowledge in plans, service records, reports, maps, past projects, and staff experience. CityAI's next phase draws on the Holistic Memory Intelligence Platform (HMIP) to help organize this knowledge and connect it with current data, forecasting tools, and human judgment.
These capabilities describe our development approach and future project direction. Each city engagement will define its own scope, data permissions, validation, and implementation plan.
We are developing plans to bring CityAI to more cities, with an initial emphasis on environmental resilience and public-service improvement. Riverside has confirmed its interest in participating in a proposed collaboration under the leadership of Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson; the project priority and scope are being developed with the City.
Our partnership model starts with a city-defined need and a focused pilot. GrmdsAI coordinates research, technical development, and education, while city partners contribute local priorities, operational guidance, and feedback. Together, we aim to build capabilities that fit existing services and can be sustained over time.
Responsible implementation includes authorized data use, privacy protection, attention to underserved communities, clear communication of uncertainty, and human review. City personnel retain responsibility for public-service decisions and official communications.
We welcome city governments, public agencies, universities, researchers, community organizations, and supporters interested in applying data and AI to practical public needs.
Start with one priority: What service could your city improve by connecting its accumulated knowledge with better analysis, prediction, and action?
Discuss a CityAI PartnershipContact Dr. Alex Liu, Director, GrmdsAI: alex@researchmethods.org