Client Profile:
The Innovation Accelerator (IA) is a public-private partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) whose mission is to promote our nation's competitiveness in the global economy by promoting America's innovation. Based in New York City and Omaha, IA serves emerging companies that have received significant grant funding from the NSF by helping them to succeed. IA works with emerging technology innovators and established technology companies across the United States. IA's mentors and corporate partners include Fortune 500 companies in various industry sectors, many of which have global reach.

Project Opportunity:
The Joslyn Institute currently utilizes a manual graphical tool to help convey the sustainability of a community. The graphic representation, called EcoSTEP, is an ideal tool for collaborative planning and communicating a region's, or project's progress toward a sustainable vision and quality of life goals. However, for maximum efficiency and replication, the tool needs to be automated and synchronized with typical "sustainability indicator" databases.

Project Solution:
The Raikes School Design Studio team will deliver a computerized version of the EcoSTEP tool. The completion of this application is an important step for the Joslyn Institute to distribute the results of their research and work. The application will enable the user to plan holistically with definable, measureable, and interdependent metrics, and be distributable anywhere there is interest and the ability to use it.

Technologies:

• Adobe Flex 3
• Grails MVC Framework
• MySQL
• Apache Tomcat