Everything from communication drones to art museum applications were on display at Monday’s Global City Teams Challenge Expo (GCTC), an initiative formed by a number of public-private sponsors in order to advance technology for smart-city applications. The event, held in Washington, D.C., drew visits from European royalty, White House cabinet members, 14 mayors from nine countries, and more than 1,600 other visitors.
In what organizers called the largest smart-city event to date, approximately 65 teams representing more than 50 municipal governments, and comprising more than 200 corporations and organizations, participated in exhibitions and presentations, many of which leverage IoT technologies. The event took place at the center court of Washington D.C.’s unique National Building Museum. The projects offered solutions in emergency response, education, energy and utilities, health, public safety, built environments, and transportation.
In opening remarks, Glenn Ricart, an Internet Hall of Famer and the founder of co-sponsor US Ignite, said that cities are the natural laboratories for smart technology applications, since they consume vast resources and contain the technical resources to effectively take action. The “exponential growth in sensors, Internet ubiquity, [the arrival of] gigabit fiber networks and wireless bandwidth,” he added, have made cities great labs for smart-city applications.
Tom Kalil, the deputy director for technology and innovation for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, reported that the White House is keen on smart cities because it sees the emergence of a civic technology movement. “A lot of technologists are interested in building a 21st-century government that is simple and effective,” he stated, noting that June 6 is the National Day of Civic Hacking, the mission of which is “to improve our communities and the governments that serve them.” Kalil added that the federal government is investing in making cyber-physical systems secure and reliable, improving the energy efficiency of wireless sensors and developing big data hubs, among many other projects.
Technology is not lacking, said SmartAmerica co-founder Sokwoo Rhee, the associate director of cyber-physical systems for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, though he told IOT Journal that last year’s emphasis on “doing really cool stuff” is no longer sufficient. “This year, we are trying to see if [IoT technologies] can generate real value, so we made it a requirement to bring in the cities, because we want to hear from the user,” he said. “In IoT, there are so many players, ideas and cool things, but at the end of the day, what counts are the benefits.”
Some of the projects demonstrated are already delivering social and economic value. The Smart Emergency Response System (SERS), which debuted at last year’s SmartAmerica competition, deploys drones equipped with directional antennas that support long-range communications. SERS allows people at disaster areas to submit help requests via drones hovering above the area, which then relay those requests to the mission control center. At the direction of the mission control center, robots may also be deployed for search-and-rescue efforts, as well as dogs equipped with sensors, including a camera and GPS transceivers. Via video from Wemberly, Texas, Coitt Kessler, a veteran firefighter with the Austin Fire Department, told attendees that SERS drone-enabled communication has been crucial to the department’s response to last week’s flooding in that area, because existing communications infrastructure “fell apart a few days ago in the floods.”
No stranger to flooding, The Netherlands, through its embassy and a visit from King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, brought to the event a strong European view of the benefits of public-private cooperation regarding smart-city projects.
The Netherlands began developing smart-city applications—notably in Amsterdam—in 2009, launching 16 pilot projects, including one that equipped 500 buildings with sensors and digital displays aimed at reducing energy use. Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Bert Koenders told IOT Journal that he believes The Netherlands’ interest in promoting the GCTC stems directly from the complex infrastructure demands in its populous cities. “We have such a dense population,” he explained, “and have had to deal with urban planning and water issues for so long, [using technology to improve urban life] is just part of our nature.”
One of the day’s most impressive presentations was from Cleveland. As part of a $350 million renovation, the Cleveland Museum of Art developed Gallery One and its associated ArtLens app, which is available for the iOS and Android operating systems. The $10 million Gallery One project features the largest multi-touch micro-tile screen in the United States, which combines images of 3,000 museum objects, along with interactive features. By touching an image on the 40-foot Collection Wall, visitors can learn more about it and similar objects, and can send information about the piece to their iPhone or iPad (or rent one from the museum). What’s more, while using the ArtLens app, they can access a map to the work in the galleries, as well as scan an image to learn more about elements of a particular piece and study its artist.
“People thought art museums were intimidating for families, with no talking, no touching, et cetera,” said Jane Alexander, the museum’s CIO, adding that a feature allowing visitors to deconstruct and study small parts of a work is “popular with art history majors and four-year-olds, which is hard to do!”