Last fall, the White House announced a “Smart Cities” initiative allocating over $160 million in federal funding to be invested in new technolo...
January 12, 2016
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Envision America, a new nationwide nonprofit, is issuing a challenge to America’s cities to become smarter by accelerating deployment of innovative technologies that tackle energy, water, waste, and air challenges.
By Monica Kanojia
Last fall, the White House announced a “Smart Cities” initiative allocating over $160 million in federal funding to be invested in new technology collaborations to help communities address issues related to resource availability, sustainability, and infrastructure. Stepping up to the Administration's call to action is Envision America, a national nonprofit whose aim is to encourage cities to meet the challenge of sustainability by developing innovative technologies that tackle energy, water, waste and air quality issues.
Envision America will host its inaugural workshop beginning today in Charlotte, NC, during which 10 selected cities, as well as industry and academic experts, will collaborate to develop smart solutions to challenges faced by cities. The selected cities slated to present their respective projects include: Pittsburgh, PA; Los Angeles, CA; San Diego, CA; Milwaukee, WI; Portland, OR; Dallas, TX; Cambridge, MA; Spokane, WA; New York City, NY; and Greenville, SC.
With projects ranging from automated transport solutions offering commuters innovative alternatives to standard options to the development of a common system for collecting, analyzing and communicating city specific sustainability data – each of the cities involved is working toward improvements that will not only benefit their communities, but will also increase connectivity, efficiency, and health improvements. The selected cities will receive technical assistance throughout the year to implement their plans with guidance from experts whose scope of work aligns with their projects. Additionally, selected cities will receive benefits from Envision America partners including:
- The Envision America App, provided by Accelerated Innovations, which will facilitate community engagement and large scale sustainability action campaigns;
- GE will provide smart city infrastructure counsel and expertise, as well as one year of free access to GE Predix, the cloud-based platform for the Industrial Internet; and
- Microsoft will provide one year of access to Microsoft Azure Government cloud platform.
Modeled after the success of Envision Charlotte, the recipient of $500,000 in federal funding through DOE to be used toward expanding its energy management approaches to more than triple the number of participating buildings across the community, Envision America is sure to have a meaningful impact nationwide in its efforts to encourage the growth and development of cities using innovative technologies to become more energy and resource efficient.