The White House has kicked off the first ever Smart Cities Week (September 15-17, 2015) in Washington, DC, announcing new steps in support of a new National Smart Cities Initiative. The National Smart Cities Initiative will invest over $160 million in federal research and leverage more than 25 new technology collaborations to help

local communities tackle key challenges such as reducing traffic congestion, fighting crime, fostering economic growth, managing the effects of a changing climate, and improving the delivery of city services.

The Administration’s Smart Cities Initiative will begin with a focus on three key strategies

• creating test beds for “Internet of Things” applications and developing new multi-sector collaborative models,
• collaborating with the civic tech movement and forging intercity collaborations,
• leveraging existing Federal activity, and
• pursuing international collaboration.

As part of this initiative, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) plans to invest $5 million in Smart Cities in FY16 and is launching a new round of the Global City Teams Challenge. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has committed nearly $40 million to help intelligently and effectively design, adapt and manage the smart and connected communities of the future at today’s event.

A few of NSF’s investments include

• issuing approximately $10 million in new cyber-physical systems research projects with a focus on smart and connected communities,
• announcing $12 million to new projects to foster communities of practice, or ”Living Labs,” that will provide mechanisms to scale up next-generation Internet application prototypes, and
• issuing an award of more than $3 million to the University of Chicago to support the creation of a new instrument – called the Array of Things – that will allow researchers to rapidly deploy sensors, embedded systems, computing, and communications systems at-scale in an urban environment.

To learn more about the National Smart Cities Initiative and see what other agencies are investing, please see the White House Fact Sheet. 

To learn more about the Smart Cities Week and see who will be coming to Washington, DC to exhibit, please see the conference website.