Smart Cities Readiness Challenge Grant Winners Announced

Each year, the Smart Cities Council, through this grant program, provides coaching, workshops, products, services, and other benefits to five communities in North America. Four cities, Louisville / Jefferson County, KY, Birmingham, AL, Cary, NC, and Las Vegas, as well as the Commonwealth of Virginia have been selected as the 2018 Smart Cities Readiness Challenge Grant recipients. This will provide them a year of mentoring and workshop support tailored to each community’s needs in the world of Smart City technology.

Louisville plans to use the organization’s expertise to further develop its smart cities plan and strategy, which will include the deployment of some 115 miles of fiber-optic cable to improve communication in the region. Birmingham will use this guidance to grow projects like smart streetlighting, open data, Wi-Fi and a bus rapid transit system. Cary is also interested in smart streetlights and similar projects, but would also like to add “destination centers” – facilities in underserved areas to assist with housing and jobs. Las Vegas wants to become a “fully connected smart city” by 2025, and will use these grant resources to get there. Virginia, the only state selected, plans on expanding broadband throughout the state and developing a cybersecurity privacy plan.

These five communities represent only a portion of other entities interested in exploring smart city technologies. Utilizing this grant allows these communities an opportunity to take these initiatives further, and it will worth monitoring how these endeavors progress, and what it may entail for the larger smart cities movement as a whole.

Source: GovTech