A senior Indian official is pushing for greater smart city collaboration among the group of countries knows as BRICS.
As reported in the Indian Express, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje recently spoke as the BRICS Smart Cities Conference in Jaipur, India. The acronym BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Raje’s presentation emphasized the potential opportunities emerging for fellow BRICS nations to cooperate in developing smart cities and related infrastructure. As well, she encouraged further information sharing between these nations to enhance and accelerate the smart city learning process.
“Member countries of BRICS can learn many things from each other,” said Raje. “The collaborations within BRICS shall strengthen ties and improve our appreciation of each other’s cultures and peoples.”
She drew attention to innovative urban environmental management practices currently being developed in such cities as Beijing, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Saint Petersburg.
Innovative projects in these cities can be explored for potential application in India, with scholars and urban planners developing deeper exchanges of knowledge with fellow nations. She said that such knowledge exchanges will improve smart cities by enhancing safety and resilience.
“Growth of population in urban settlements is posing many challenges. It has placed additional loads on the infrastructure in every city,” said Raje. “Our thinking is that cities of tomorrow require technology-driven inputs to make life of our citizens easier and safer.”
BRICS may have more pressing citizen needs than others
In her presentation, the minister discussed the support of the Indian government for smart city transformations of Jaipur, Ajmer, Kota and Udaipur.
She added that a critical element in the process of developing smart cities is the tandem development of smart citizens. This echoes a growing sentiment among smart city pundits that governments are forgetting about citizens in the rush to implement whizzy new smart city technology.
“To make our citizens smart and skilled, our government has taken skill development as a top most priority,” she said.
“We have engaged with numerous partners in skilling up our youth in a wide range of trades,” continued Raje. “ITIs have been taken up by industrial houses to impart skills and all our industry partners are collaborators in creating job and imparting world class training to our youth.
With federal and regional governments jumping on the smart cities bandwagon, industry pundits want big government to butt out and let local players work their magic.
Specifically, panellists stressed the need to allow local autonomy when building out smart city strategies. And in order to do this, federal and regional governments were told repeatedly to simply get out of the way.
“There’s an understanding that if we are charging cities with being our leaders of innovation — both local governments themselves, as well as cities as sort of test grounds of innovation — then we need to empower cities to do that,” said Christy McFarland from the National League of Cities. “And there are many constraints, particularly on local governments, to have them facilitate additional innovation in the economy.”
The panel included representatives from Dell, the World Bank and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And despite the presence of big government, the recurring message from the discussion was that local governments needed less interference and more resources to grow smart cities from the ground up.
One way that smart city advocates saw this bottom-up strategy playing out is through the development of direct partnerships between local governments and their tech startup communities.
Do smart city efforts need to be local?
McFarland cited San Francisco as an example, where the city recruited a startup to create a platform to improve traveler navigation of its international airport.
Such public-private partnerships are key to developing data-driven smart cities of the future, according to U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Michael Hendrix. He says that without effective collaboration between local governments and the city’s technology firms, smart cities will never reach their full potential.
“You can have all the capital and talent and research capacity in the world and yet still not generate sustained innovation and start-up activity — or at least, not as much as you otherwise could,” he said.
The topic of local government empowerment comes as concerns mount that many smart city initiatives are focusing on solving peripheral urban problems, with few big projects tackling core city issues.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing like wildfire. Consumer education around this new basket of technologies is critical, since it basically describes a product category that can — and often does — include virtually every “thing” we interact with in our lives.
Your car, refrigerator, door locks, and even your toilet seat are capable of becoming part of the Internet of Things. All they need is a sensor and a network connection.2 From home automation to large industrial applications, this new generation of network-enabled devices are changing the way we live, work, and play.
So, what are some practical examples of the IoT and its influence in our lives? Here are just a few that could apply to the average consumer.
The dawn of self-driving cars
In a handful of years, your car may be able to drive itself without any need of human intervention. Brands like Tesla, Mercedes, and Google are already in the process of developing a new generation of vehicles that can navigate the roadways while you kick back and enjoy the ride.
Google, which started its self-driving car project several years ago, has well over 1.5 million miles of autonomous travel clocked on United States roadways — and every mile is an education for the technology.
Major auto manufacturers like Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and Honda are also making huge strides towards freeing driver’s hands. Tesla, a relatively new name in the auto industry,scored over 375,000 reservations of its upcoming Model 3 within days of accepting them.
These cars are equipped with a host of different IoT components. They are littered with sensors that detect hazards, track the roadway, and more. They also rely on both on-vehicle and remote processing to determine the quickest and safest route to the destination. Many of these vehicles are expected to connect directly to the driver or passenger’s smartphone to give them useful information about the ride.
The IoT around you: home automation
A growing number of homes include connected devices. Home thermostats, security systems, appliances, and even smaller bits and pieces like window blinds and light bulbs are finding a new life in the Internet of Things.
Thermostats are possibly the most obvious and common example of the Internet of Things in the home. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to change the temperature in your home, your best bet was to walk over to the thermostat and adjust it. Ten years ago, you could program your thermostat to make your home more comfortable around the time you would be getting home from work.
Today, you can hop on your phone and control your home security system, temperature, and more from anywhere in the world in real time.
Your oven can even become a full-fledged member of the Internet of Things., enabling you to set food-specific temperatures and timers from your smartphone and even take a look at your food as it is being prepared from anywhere in the world.
Connecting future cities
Smart cities is a much larger and more involved area of application for the Internet of Things than the home, but the concept remains very much the same. Sensors, including video surveillance, traffic, and more placed throughout a city enable that city to be managed more efficiently and for its city government to respond to situations as they happen rather than having to depend on the citizenry to alert them to problems.
For example, traffic jams are a common problem in large and growing cities. Management of that traffic is done via traffic lights, but these are often set on timers and/or controlled via sensors embedded into the roadway that indicate cross-traffic is waiting for a green light.
If, however, there was a more big-picture view of how busy specific streets are, where accidents and other delay-causing events are taking place, traffic controls could be more readily adjusted to compensate for them.
A new industrial revolution
Another big area of development for the Internet of Things is in industry. Businesses small and large benefit from the type of data gathered by IoT devices in the workplace.
An IoT device that senses activity on an industrial machine could eliminate the need for a worker to physically monitor it on the warehouse floor. Multiple heavy machines could be controlled and monitored from a single control panel by a skeleton crew – saving the business money on staffing.
This rise in industrial automation paves the way for businesses to invest their staffing dollars on other skilled employment opportunities including research, development, systems management, and data science.
Speaking of data science, consumer IoT products relay a lot of valuable information to a business. This information enables the company to examine ways to improve on their products or services, lets them know how their products are being used so they can invest in expanding on those high-demand features, and more.
This also opens the door to a whole new area of value for the consumer. Apple releasing the Apple Watch enabled the company to add new incentive for customers to stick with the Apple-branded family of products. Additionally, it gave its customers a whole new fitness-tracking device, payment method, and a way to check and respond to messages without having to pick up their phone.
The examples of IoT technologies in the world are virtually endless. The Internet of Things is a large and ever-expanding category of products that reach into every aspect of our lives. Because, after all, the Internet of Things is… everything.
As autonomous vehicles and smart city investments continue their blistering growth, experts say it’s vital that these two connected juggernauts work in better synchronicity.
An article by IT Online discusses recent findings by the International Data Corporation (IDC) its report “Collaboration Between Automotive OEMs and City Leaders for Implementing Connected Car and Smart City Solutions.”
In the report IDC looked at the interplay between these two massively transformational technologies which are generating huge levels of investment.
Global spending on autonomous cars will reach $29.6 billion by 2017, while governments around the world plan to spend $16.5 billion on intelligent transportation systems in the same timeframe.
IDC says that private-sector leaders of connected car technology must better collaborate with state and local governments to develop further advancements in urban environments.
Specifically, IDC says these two factions must work together on developing solutions for such issues as urban congestion, environmental impacts, street safety, better vehicle design and more value-added services for citizens.
“Connected cars have reached critical mass, and their interaction with the transportation infrastructure within Smart Cities is ongoing,” said IDC report authors Heather Ashton and Ruthbea Yesner Clarke.
“Automotive OEMs and smart city leaders will need to work closely to ensure the continued development of, and support for, connected car capabilities and services such as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications that will increasingly include autonomous operations.”
But are smart cities projects tackling real problems?
IDC’s recommendations come amid reports that predict that annual revenues from smart city projects will grow to nearly $89 billion by 2025. Despite this spending most smart city initiatives, include smart transportation projects, are focusing on solving peripheral issues, with few big projects tackling core city problems.
Meanwhile, connected car technology is witnessing a global race between technology giants like Tesla, Google and traditional auto manufacturers to develop the category killing robot vehicle. Yet these proponents of autonomous vehicles are focusing more on the technical self-sufficiency of their cars in urban environments, and less on how they integrate into the larger fabric of the reconfigured smart city of the future.
Two more partners have joined Microsoft in developing a $500 million smart city 30 miles northwest of Washington, DC – the first of its kind in the area.
Private equity firm 22 Capital Partners, lead proponent of the Ashburn smart city initiative, announced it added the Center for Innovative Technology and George Washington University to the project. This follows news in March of co-investments in the project by technology leviathan Microsoft and Crescent Ridge Capital Partners.
As part of the initiative, a new umbrella entity for the project, 22 CityLink, is developing a “Smart City In-A-Box” platform. The replicable smart city platform aims to link “together all aspects of real estate development with a preconfigured, intelligent framework.”
The first test project of the platform will be the 16-acre Gramercy District in Ashburn that will underpin the smart cities that 22 Capital develops in the future.
Gramercy District in DC will be well connected
Gramercy District will have transit and commuter links to D.C., 900 residential units, a hotel, an office building, retail space, parking garages and a high-tech business center. The smart city will boost connectivity to the areas along the corridor between Washington D.C. and Washington Dulles International Airport.
“We believe that modern technology is going to be a major force in urbanization projects and can improve the overall quality of life for the citizen,” said 22 Capital Partners’ Minh Le. “Our project is particularly ideal for this partnership because we are able to take a holistic approach to help foster breakthroughs in technology that will bring practical and economic solutions.”
George Washington University and its Virginia Science & Technology Campus in Ashburn will contribute its expertise in cyber security, data analytics and entrepreneurial development. The university is also a member of national smart cities initiative MetroLab Network that fosters cooperation between research institutes and municipalities.
Meanwhile the Center for Innovative Technology brings to the partnership its leadership in entrepreneurial ecosystems and early stage investment programs.
“Through this partnership we will look to harness this team’s diverse technology expertise and higher education program deployment with this project,” added Le. “Our goal is to build a strong public-private-academia partnership to drive innovation and higher education.”
The Gramercy District smart city news comes amid reports that predict that annual revenues from smart city projects will grow to nearly $89 billion by 2025. Despite this spending growth concerns are mounting that many smart city initiatives are focusing on solving peripheral issues, with few big projects tackling core city problems.
Persian Gulf metropolis Dubai is ramping up its long-running smart city strategy to capitalize on emerging opportunities in a market worth trillions of dollars.
While many municipal governments around the globe are only now beginning to explore smart city projects, Dubai is more than a decade into its smart city strategy. Trade Arabia says the largest city in the United Arab Emirates is now in the process of shifting into Phase Two of its expansive smart city strategy.
The city wrapped up Phase One of its smart city plans this spring. One part of that phase was the Smart Dubai Government initiative, which has already saved the government $1.17 billion in its 13 years of existence.
As part of Phase Two, the new Smart Dubai Office (SDO) will take over this initiative as well as the Dubai Data initiative. The SDO will incorporate these projects into its Happiness Agenda for the city which it announced this May. This project will guide Dubai’s smart city transformation with a methodical, science-based approach to improving the urban area’s overall happiness.
A key component of the Happiness Agenda is the Happiness Metre, which contributes to cutting-edge benchmarking processes that are widely used by private and public sectors in the city.
“Smart Cities are rising throughout the world, but governments and industry need to agree on what actually makes a city smart,” said Palo Alto City’s chief information officer Jonathan Reichental, who is slated to speak at Dubai’s Gitex conference this fall. “Dubai’s efforts to develop global benchmarks will help cities measure their progress, so that leading innovators, from Silicon Valley to Dubai to Bangalore, can deploy practical tools to measure how they’re improving people’s lives.”
Dubai knows benchmarking is critical
Smart Dubai director general Aisha Bin Bishr said that benchmarking was an integral part of the such smart city projects as The Happiness Metre, the Dubai Data Portal and the Smart Dubai Platform.
“After spending over two years working on benchmarking, creating a blue print, building the framework and testing services on a government level, we are now working on delivering tangible benefits to the residents and visitors of Dubai,” he said.
Dubai is pushing forward into further Internet of Things (IoT) integration, embracing the burgeoning technology that is expected to generate $1.6 trillion in smart cities impact by 2025. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report predicts these IoT impacts will include $800 billion in transportation opportunities and $700 billion in healthcare.
Yet despite the global buzz around the topic of smart cities, concerns are mounting that many smart city initiatives are focusing on solving peripheral urban problems, with few big projects tackling core city issues.
For remote offline communities, Facebook’s autonomous test plane moved another step closer to providing internet to Earth’s least connected places.
As reported in Smart Cities World, the social media giant recently ran full scale tests of its Aquila unmanned airplane. Facebook intends to use the solar-powered plane to provide regional web connectivity to billions of people living in Earth’s most remote communities.
The plane, which was developed by Facebook’s Connectivity Lab, faces significant technical hurdles before it is complete. As well, its chief engineer says the project needs to develop key partnerships between governments and other partners to enable it succeed in various locations around the globe.
“This will require significant advancements in science and engineering to achieve,” said Facebook’s global chief of engineering and infrastructure Jay Parikh. “It will also require us to work closely with operators, governments and other partners to deploy these aircraft in the regions where they’ll be most effective.”
The solar-powered drone has a wingspan of a normal airliner and flies at a high altitude of 60,000. Its hyper-efficient design will eventually allow it to fly for three continuous months.
Facebook says the plane still has a long way to go before it can stay aloft for months at a time, though the latest test exceeded expectations.
“It was so successful that we ended up flying Aquila for more than 90 minutes — three times longer than originally planned,” Parikh said.
Facebook has now confirmed Aquila’s design
The drone uses millimeter wave systems and laser communications to beam down connectivity from above the clouds. Once fully operational, the drone will be able to circle a zone 60 miles in diameter, providing continuous internet to people living below.
Aquila is part of Connectivity Lab’s mission to connect people in far-flung locations through the use of drones, satellites and other communications systems.
In Aquila’s first functional low-level flight over Arizona, Facebook verified the plane’s overall aircraft design and operational models.
“In our next tests, we will fly Aquila faster, higher and longer, eventually taking it above 60,000 feet. Each test will help us learn and move faster toward our goal,” said Parikh.
In order for the robot plane to achieve three months of continuous solar-powered flight, its systems have been optimized to only consume 5,000 watts at cruising speed. This is equal to the electricity usage of three hair dryer.
It’s easy with the evolution towards cars that are not only connected but autonomous vehicles to forget that such technologically enhanced vehicles are preceded by cars that have operated with perfect functionality for many years despite their lack of technical prowess.
Up until now, the owners of such cars have been faced with two options: remain “disconnected” or upgrade to a new car. Thanks to a Munich-based IoT company called ThinxNet, car owners with model years from 2001 onwards can get some of the technological advances afforded to those with newer car models.
The system is called TankTaler, and includes a hardware dongle — which includes a SIM card and GPS monitor — and a corresponding smart phone app. The dongle plugs into the OBD II interface, the port located below the steering wheel that mechanics access to get diagnostic information about your car.
Once paired with the app, the car owner can get a range of information about the car, This includes battery and fuel levels, details of travel routes and driving behaviour, anti-theft protection and more. We spoke with Regina Werner at ThinxNet to learn more.
TankTaler concept actually came from the farm
TankTaler was launched in November 2015 after the ThinxNet founders pivoted from their original plan to use GPS technology to track the location of cow herd on large farms in the Alps or Argentina. The dongle and app are free for participants who additionally earn bonus points called TankTaler which can be redeemed in gift vouchers — from gas stations or retailers like Amazon around Germany with loyalty program with cash-back system.
The TankTaler device offers a range of functionalities, that interest different people in different ways. Werner explained:
“Some users want really simple features, for example, people who live in the cities often do not have a private parking lot, hence they spend hours looking for a place to park their car – and thus always park at different sites. Additionally, they often share cars. This means they never know where their car is parked. Then there’s tech driven people who are super interested in the statistics around the car such as the driving behaviour, how harsh they are breaking, how much they’re accelerating and the distances they’ve travelled. Then you have people that like using TankTaler as they like to save money”.
Currently, they have about 25,000 customers, “the largest private fleet in Germany,” mainly in Munich and Cologne. They generate revenues through partnerships with various companies including gas stations, garages, car dealerships, restaurants and retail chains; McDonald’s and IKEA are both partners.
Discount benefits…and reclaiming your data
That means TankTaler users get discounts and other benefits. You can imagine there being some attractive connections with car insurances also. However, ThinxNet’s work is underpinned with the idea of personal “sovereignty”over personal data. Werner notes that:
“Right now most car manufacturers are collecting data without drivers being aware of it and trying to earn money out of it. We believe that drivers should own their data and decide what to do with it, according to what will directly benefit them”.
It also benefits people who use their car for business. As Werner explains:
“When you use your car also for business you get tax deductions according to your mileage but you have to document your journey in a log book. Through TankTaler people can download all their trips as a spreadsheet. By comparison, a competitor’s product offering only this feature costs over €700”.
TankTaler also enables payments
The dongle works without the need for a mobile phone connection. This has meant that it is possible to track the cars location precisely and get help in the event of a break down or accident as the device is connected to an emergency call number. This is akin to the functions of the latest BMW motorcycles and is expected to be made mandatory in all new cars by 2018.
ThinxNet are working to join forces with automobile clubs to enable the tracking of broken down cars with the app able to send their precise location. As the dongle has its own battery, it can send data even if the dongle is removed by a car theft or the car battery gets disconnected in the case of a crash.
Perhaps one of the most innovative uses of the TankTaler is in one touch payments at gas stations. Users can fill up, tap the app, and get back in their car. They are then sent a monthly bill to pay. This is very innovative for Germany where you normally have to pay inside the shop and many retailers favor cash over other payment methods. Werner notes:
“Gas station owners are sometimes 60-plus (years old) and hard to explain the technology to, but when you show that people can pay through the app, people think that’s really revolutionary. Some owners are like ‘This is the biggest revolution in the last 40 years in the industry.'”
But perhaps some of the more indirect benefits of TankTaler are through big data analysis.
The device has the potential to track large groups of drivers throughout concentrated areas and thus is able to measure the popularity of driving routes and determine weak spots where a road needs to be repaired or there’s a spot with high rates of accidents.
This could potentially include information for smart city planners such as where to situate traffic lights and how to control them with the help of real time data to get a smooth flow of traffic. It can also help developers determine where gas stations should be built according to traffic flow.
ThinxNet intends on branching up to other parts of Europe in the upcoming months, paving the way for enter into other countries around the world. The irony of such an enterprise as this is that as connected cars become more normal, they will gradually be placing themselves out of a job, but for now, that time is a long way off.
Backers of a controversial $151 billion high-speed rail plan claim it will be funded by the creation of eight new Australian smart cities.
As reported by Australian newspaper The Age, long-sought details are finally emerging about a proposed high-speed rail line between Sydney and Melbourne. The proposed railway would cut travel time from the current 12 hours to less than three hours.
This comes as politicians have voiced greater interest in supporting smart city plans in Australia.
As part of the rail plan, proponents Consolidated Land and Rail Australia said it would create eight new smart cities along the magnetic levitation train route. The company says its smart cities would be kitted out with such beneficial aspects as renewable energy, low water usage, high-speed internet and affordable homes.
However, the Age raised concerns that the rail line may be a grand unattainable dream. Skepticism is partly coming from the idea of building eight entirely new smart cities from scratch, which is a monumental task by any standards.
High-speed rail but no new taxes?
As well, the claim that the entire project would be completed with no taxpayer money whatsoever also raised eyebrows.
The project proponents said they would finance the railroad and smart cities through real estate speculation of the land along the proposed train route. The company predicts that the cheap farmland they’ve already optioned on the train line would skyrocket in value as soon as residential developments were built.
The Age suggests that such a strategy makes this plan more a real estate play than an investment in transport or smart cities.
While Consolidated’s smart city-driven transport plan states that it will use not burden the public purse, an alternate high-speed rail plan already exists, which was developed at considerable public expense.
The $20 million federal study by AECOM was released in 2013. It projected that a high-speed rail line, which would cover the 1,750 km between Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, would have cost $84 billion in 2012 dollars.
Considering the current economic conditions in Australia, such a hefty price tag essentially ensures that such a rail line would not get built using public resources.
New York is undergoing some interesting changes in the pedestrian world, having begun the installation of LinkNYC smart sidewalk kiosks throughout the city.
These new sidewalk kiosks offer pedestrians free device charging and tablets for web browsing, along with a 911 call button and the ability to make phone calls.
Other kinds of smart kiosks can record car and bike movements, track wireless devices in close proximity, monitor street sounds and aid in identifying random packages, according to information gathered by Recode. Cities could, in the future, decide on what data to gather and use with the aid of smart kiosks, depending on what sensors kiosks have.
Sidewalk Labs is one company that is currently trying to sell the idea of their particular smart kiosks to cities, stating that communities will greatly benefit from the information that can be gathered.
“It is a win-win solution,” responds Alexei Pozdnoukhov, director of the Smart Cities Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. “Cities get environmental sensing to meet public health regulations and figure out the ‘livability’ of streets, and companies get … a playground for building new services.”
Information gathered by these kiosks could aid cities with monitoring traffic situations, discovering gas leaks and testing air quality and likely improve safety in other ways too.
“Sidewalk suggests that the video sensors might spot ‘abandoned packages or objects,’ raising the possibility of the technology being used to foil terrorist incidents,” according to an article in Recode. “More mundanely, the company says the camera could also detect clogged drains and standing water on roadways.”
Privacy is a big concern among citizens
Despite the benefits, a big issue in regards to these kiosks is privacy and security for individuals. Although the company states that all the information gathered would be anonymous, encrypted and regularly erased, many people still voice concerns. The company also claims that no data will be sold to a third party such as Google, in answer to one of the many complaints issued.
However, The Village Voice does not agree, calling the kiosks “data-hoovering sentinels” that Google is using to extend “its near-monopoly on information about our online behavior to include our behavior in physical space as well.”
The New York chapter of the ACLU has also discussed privacy worries. Eventually, there are to be 7,500 kiosks installed throughout the city, with the gigabit internet infrastructure that links them, the free Wi-Fi, the phone calling and USB charging all offered for free to the city. LinkNYC kiosks will be managed by the CityBridge company.
“If CityBridge is using a business model that is not charging, and they are spending a bunch of money putting these things in, they are going to be monetizing the data hard,” Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explained to The Village Voice. “That means that they are always thinking about how to collect your data and how to profit off of it.”
Despite the concerns, these kiosks can offer some great benefits to community members. Depending on the outcome of these in New York and the ones being pushed by Sidewalk Labs, you might see these kiosks popping up in your city in the near future.
At the Smart Cities Innovation Summit this month in Austin, public-benefit dev firm US Ignite called out the 15 communities participating in their Smart Gigabit Cities Program — designed to build public services that could be shared with other cities in the program.
The 15 communities include: Austin, TX; Cleveland, OH; Burlington, VT; Chattanooga, TN; Flint, MI; Madison, WI; Richardson, TX; Kansas City, MO; North Carolina Next Generation Network; and Utah Wasatch Front Cities.
Each of these communities will implement a low-latency and ultra-fast network with locavore — local or edge cloud –computing and storage capabilities.
US Ignite is a non-profit that fosters the creation of next-generation internet applications that provide transformative public benefit. They were awarded a $6 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation in Sept. 2015 specifically for this program and plan to assist these communities through education and resources for funding and deployment.
Since the information economy is only as strong as the infrastructure it’s built on — and the US is painfully behind the rest of the world in speed and price when it comes to affordable high-speed internet — the effort has a big potential upside.
It’s incredibly expensive for ISP startups to build out new fiber networks. With this lack of competition, major telecommunications companies who monopolize the industry have no incentive to make the switch either.
Not only a broader potential economic growth at stake, but social equality as “…too many of our citizens are stuck in digital darkness, without the primary tool needed for seamless communications for health care, education, civic participation, and professional advancement,” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in a 2015 speech supporting subsidizing the internet for the poor.
Access to affordable high-speed internet is necessary for economic well-being and a critical component to leveling the socio-economic playing field, thus government officials are particularly interested in finding ways to support faster, more affordable internet solutions.
Program brings smart city efforts to smaller communities
So cue the Smart Gigabit Cities Program, including communities that US Ignite says have “made a significant commitment toward leveraging next-generation smart city and Internet technologies to keep pace with the world’s rapidly changing technology and economy,” according to a U.S. Ignite news release.
Private sector partners are also along for the initiative, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Juniper, Mozilla, internet2, and Viavi Solutions.
“HP is delighted to not only be part of the vision and sponsorship, but as the fabric for the next phase of rolls out in the first 15 cities.” said Rob Courtney, HPE’s general manager for public sector. “This infrastructure will allow the US Ignite vision to become a reality for the new generation of applications running on the next generation Internet.”
“This program is a pivotal moment for Smart Community application development,” Glenn Ricart, co-founder and CTO of US Ignite. “The benefits of each community’s program will be amplified by this network of Smart Gigabit Communities. It’s innovation in a 15-community consortium where each community’s contribution is multiplied by 15, so we look forward to working with each team in each community on their exciting projects.” he added.
The Smart Cities thing is getting big. How big? Big enough for the Federal government to take notice and even set aside $40 million in grant dollars to support one city to fully integrate innovative technologies – self-driving cars, connected vehicles, and smart sensors – into their transportation network.
It’s the Department of Transportation’s Smart Cities Challenge and the seven finalist cities competing for the chance to be the first U.S. Smart City in mobility and transportation.
In this competition, to incentivize the private sector, an additional $10 million from Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc. has been pledged to support electric vehicle deployment and other carbon emission reduction strategies.
We spoke with Jay Nath, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of San Francisco, about San Francisco’s bid for the DOT Smart City Challenge and what it means to be a Smart City at the epicenter of innovation, Silicon Valley.
ReadWrite: What differentiates San Francisco from the six other finalist cities competing in the DOT Smart Cities Challenge?
Jay Nath: What differentiates us is that we’ve taken an approach to listening to our community – the bottom-up approach. We’re issuing a community challenge where we ask our citizens about their needs and challenges as it relates to transportation. Once we identify their needs, we then work with the community, industry and academic partners to really think about solutions, pilot these solutions to maximize learning, and understand how it integrates into different neighborhoods and regions. We know tech is advancing, but how it plays into society is the real question.
RW: How does your pilot process work?
JN: Normally when cities do pilots, there is a lot of risk involved, with companies investing a lot of energy and time up front. We’re doing the competitive process up front and choose the best company to work with. If everything works out the in the experimental period, we can move into contract and skip the additional procurement processes creating a pathway from learning and experimentation to commercialization and scalability.
We know government doesn’t move at the quickest speed. We have to rethink how we streamline our approach. With this challenge, we only have three years and need to get as much testing and learning done as possible to be successful.
RW: How do you work with startups to support innovation in government?
JN: We realize government procurement is a big barrier to why startups don’t consider the public sector. They just don’t have the runway to wait for government processes to pull through. That is why we created the Startup In Residence, or STIR, program as a way to create new products and services by imbedding startups in government for 16 weeks, with a competitive solicitation up front. It only takes 30-60 minutes for a startup to apply, and if accepted, it essentially acts as a request for proposal. If everything works out, we can go into contract with them.
RW: If accepted into the program, are they guaranteed a contract with San Francisco?
JN: It has to be a good fit on both sides. This is a big shift in direction from the norm for government. In any other environment, you try before you buy, but in government, we don’t do that. We go through an RFP process first before getting the chance to learn and understand if the program or product is a good fit. We are changing that and want to create a space to learn and understand; to respect business models, lower barriers and expand the pool of people we’re working with.
RW: If San Francisco doesn’t with the DOT Challenge, what will you do to continue the momentum?
JN: We are confident, as San Francisco, that we are well positioned. We are at the center of all this innovation, new products and services all happening here in the Bay Area. We’ve done large grants before with the DOT – SF Park, a smart parking program with demand-based pricing, that is now a global practice, so we know how to do large scale programs. If we don’t win this challenge, we are moving forward either way. We need to be at the table, society needs to be at the table with these tech companies and industry. They are inventing the future, and we need to be sure it’s equitable, positive for everybody, and safe. We don’t want products just for the 1%.
We will move forward regardless, and part of that is in creating a smart cities platform called Superpublic with our partners, UC Berkeley, City Innovate Foundation, and a number of private partners (i.e. Deloitte and Microsoft). We realize it’s not going to be government, academia, or industry, rather we all need to work together to solve the problems of today. We can support this by removing the layers of bureaucracy, providing a dedicated space where federal, state, and local government to be vertically integrated, bring in industry and academia, and innovate how to collaborate better.
RW: How do you move from ideation to implementation working with all these different sectors?
JN: The key part is to understand what the need is. Set the problem statement, have a methodology, and time-bound the work. If we continue to think abstractly, we’re not moving forward. Silicon Valley has an agile approach to innovation – run small experiments and build upon those learnings. If we win this grant, we have three years, and need to move quickly and effectively.
RW: Do you consider your fellow cities competitors or partners in this challenge?
JN: The challenge is moving government from reactive to proactive and taking a leadership role. We know that mobility is changing – instead of waiting for change to happen and reacting to it, we need to work together to anticipate what those changes are and change the regulatory environment to meet those challenges and benefits. That is a Huge mind-shift and I applaud DOT for doing that. In doing this, the whole nation’s going to benefit, not just SF, if we win, but every city. There are no losers here because we will all be able to learn from each other.
That is the great thing about cities – we can collaborate – we can ask what’s working, learn from each other, and work together. And if we do work together, that creates a greater market opportunity for our partners. We often have the same needs, so leveraging our relationships as cities is a powerful way to help catalyze private industries to work with us.
RW: How are you working with public and private partners in this challenge?
JN: We have so much talent and innovation happening here in the Bay Area. When we reached out for support, we had an amazing response. Over 200 people came to our partner event, we received over 100 proposals on ways to contribute and work with us, and had 70 companies submit commitments and support letters totaling over $150 million worth of contribution.
As a region, we put a really strong proposal together, it’s hard to walk away from $150 million ready to deploy.
RW: As the Chief Innovation Officer of San Francisco, what to you, makes a smart city, smart?
JN: It is really about our people – that is why San Francisco is a leader. Great cities are created by great people. We have the courage to dream big and not question that dream, and what happens in San Francisco follows in California and the rest of the country. We have natural leadership and want to continue that tradition by being good partners and find ways to streamline the approach to working with us. We’re not experts in tech, but we need to understand the benefits so when we make capital investments in our roads, sewer systems, and waterways, we are making sure we’re hearing from all the right people first. We want to change the interaction from a sales conversation to one where we discuss how to work together to achieve these outcomes. This is a big shift in how were thinking – much more collaborative.
RW: What are your goals and dreams for the City of San Francisco?
JN: I want a city that’s safer, one that’s reducing climate impact, more affordable, and more equitable. Technology plays a role in that – it’s not going to solve all those issues, but to see change some of those areas, we need to work together. It’s something we’re good at – it’s in our DNA in San Francisco to work across different communities particularly in technology.
RW: What is your advice to startups trying to get involved in government?
JN: There is a huge opportunity to make an impact. It’s a big market – $150 billion, annually, and government is changing, we’re learning how to work with early stage startups. People realize, if there is a way to work together, understand the risks but be smart about it, we can make progress. San Francisco adopted smart policies around startups and how you work with them with the STIR program. A number of other cities are becoming part of this movement to discover how we make governments and society more effective through innovation and collaboration. It’s a global movement that’s already happening.
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