Smart Cities

The plan is to use smart city infrastructure to offer ubiquitous connectivity — physical and wireless — between homes, businesses, educational institutions, public safety, community services and modern vehicles.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is experimenting with autonomous technology from ThorDrive in its vehicles carrying luggage between the terminal and aircraft.

A new report from Jacobs Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech addresses a range of digital city issues like data privacy as a foundation for any city considering the deployment of urban technology to advance community goals.

New Orleans recently collected smart city proposals to achieve broadband equity in the city. However, it’s unclear how the city will ensure data privacy as it unfolds the broad urban tech initiative.

The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) hopes to run more efficiently by gaining insights from Internet of Things (IoT) tech. One expert says success will depend on passenger trust in IoT.

Citizens in El Monte, Calif., will be taking advantage of digital signage that reveals the availability of roughly 400 parking spots in the city. The system also includes an app that can help residents plan their travel.

The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada is using dashcam footage gathered from ride-hailing drivers to gain added insights into the status of the hundreds of highway work zones in the Las Vegas region.

The Revive! Challenge, organized by the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, is open to low- or no-cost tech solutions to help communities in a post-COVID world. Submissions are due May 5, and winners will be named in July.

On the second day of the Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo, private- and public-sector tech officials discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic shifted smart city efforts and initiatives and positioned them for the future.

The eighth annual Smart Cities Connect Conference & Expo opened with a panel discussion around digital equity and the need for all communities to expand access to broadband as they emerge from the COVID-19 crisis.

Chattanooga has been selected as one of two U.S. cities in a global initiative to use broadband and data to plan and utilize energy, transportation, health care and communications in more sustainable and equitable ways.

During a tech-focused talk with the National League of Cities Friday, President-elect Joe Biden promised to be supportive of urban leaders once in office, echoing a general friendliness toward local government thus far.

The growing laundry list of connected devices and vehicles continue to make the case for platforms that pull all of the data into one easily accessible system. Two projects are doing just that in Georgia and South Dakota.

US Ignite and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions have released the "Smart Cities Data Catalog Specification" to aid in smoother data-sharing efforts among the public sector, third parties and others.

Three Georgia cities and a county will participate in this year's Georgia Tech Smart Communities Challenge, which builds on collaborations to develop transportation and transit innovation projects.

Smart city leaders from Houston, New Orleans and Columbus, Ohio, discussed their vision for tomorrow's cities following widespread disruptions brought on by the pandemic, economic hardships and social unrest.

The smart cities movement has evolved from sensors on light poles aimed at improving traffic flow to connected platforms that are practical, efficient and equitable for government, businesses and residents.

Now that the initial hype around the smart cities movement has begun to fade, gov tech leaders must examine how to use those technologies to do the most good for citizens and stakeholders alike.