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Raimundo Rodulfo, Director of Innovation and Technology / CIO, City of Coral GablesOne of the most exciting and rewarding components of Smart City innovation and technology is an active and fruitful collaboration with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) organizations and research and development (R&D) institutions in academia, government and industry. Connecting the dots and aligning strategies among the stakeholders of a diverse ecosystem of doers –inventors, makers and innovators across multiple sectors and verticals– opens unique opportunities to solve real problems and address challenges that impact quality of life for the communities we serve.
A synergetic, inclusive, creative, and entrepreneurial R&D approach is a win for all parties involved in a joint Smart City innovation endeavor across sectors and industries. And ultimately, it’s a win for their customers and constituents. For example: those of us managing Smart City initiatives in the public sector have the opportunity to augment capacity, skills and brainpower for technology infrastructure projects and services by leveraging research programs and institutional resources from subject matter experts including those from universities, professional bodies, industry associations, scientific laboratories, and other organizations. This allows us to lower the cost and speed of innovation and add value for our customers in the form of tangible cutting-edge solutions. In doing so, we get the opportunity to test and adopt new technologies and novel methodologies and put them in practice –with rigorous risk management and compliance controls– in a practical setting in our community, even before they become available to the consumer market.
At the same time, research teams, including students, doctoral candidates and post-doc industry and scholarly researchers, get to partner with cities and local communities to develop and test prototypes and conduct research experiments in a real urban testbed environment, leveraging proven technology infrastructure and Smart City resources already in place, while strengthening their business proposition for grant applications and maximizing their use of awarded funding resources.
Even though a logical starting point is to partner with local academic institutions and STEM organizations headquartered in your community, today these kinds of collaborations are not bound by geographic and physical limitations as much as they were in the past. Aside from jurisdictional and security constraints and physical/practical execution requirements, today’s Smart City collaborations between remote workgroups take advantage of digital interoperability tools and test simulation capabilities on distributed clouds and decentralized virtual development environments. This facilitates Delphi technique exercises and agile teamwork with research peers regardless of where they are and opens broader opportunities for co-innovation. Jack Kilby, an electrical engineer and inventor of the microchip said that invention is a natural consequence of working on interesting projects. In my own experience, a public sector organization working on collaborative Smart City projects is also performing creatively and entrepreneurially that leads to experimentation, unique solutions, and new practical frameworks for civic innovation.
The City of Coral Gables Innovation and Technology department (CGIT) team has taken a 360° collaborative approach to Smart City technology services and continuous improvement programs as an effective way to refine and execute our strategic plans, help others, conduct impactful research, augment skills, add capacity, and remain competitive and innovative as an organization and a team. It is a continuous synergetic cycle that starts with sharing and communicating. This continuum has established a diverse portfolio of collaborative programs and centers of excellence with leading organizations across sectors (science, academia, government, industry, business, and nonprofit/professional) and verticals (energy, transportation, telecommunications, utilities, education, healthcare). It has laid out a five-stage virtuous cycle: “Share → Learn → Partner → Collaborate → Build Collective Value → repeat” –in synchronization with other infrastructure, service delivery and project management frameworks (www.coralgables.com/itdocs) to help us connect the dots for collaborative innovation, develop competitive strengths, and make a difference for the entire community. Some of our team’s recent collaboration case studies that exemplify this actionable cycle include:
• STEM research collaboration projects with various academic and professional institutions – the University of Miami, Florida International University, University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of West Virginia, George Mason University, Georgia Tech, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, American Society for Quality, American Planning Association, STIR Labs and City Innovate, among others, on diverse fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, internet of things (IoT), supercomputing, data science, blockchain and Web3, business technology, cyberinfrastructure, cybersecurity, electrical and electronics engineering, computer science, quality engineering and process improvement, policy and governance, augmented reality, spatial computing, among others.
“A synergetic, inclusive, creative, and entrepreneurial R&D approach is a win for all parties involved in a joint Smart City innovation endeavor across sectors and industries.”
These collaborations leveraged funding from federal agencies such as the Departments of Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security and other entities, and produced multiple solutions for our community, such as: artificial intelligence digital assistant (AIDA) natural language processing (NLP) chatbot for the Coral Gables smart city hub public platform; Smart microgrid resilient energy system research and prototype for critical public safety facilities and EV charging stations with solar/PV and wind renewable energy sources; Predictive data analytics for traffic and environmental city sensors, smart poles, and public-facing dashboards; Smart Cities competitions and hackathons team projects; Original joint research papers published on scientific journals and other media; Cyberinfrastructure and security training for city employees.
• Research collaboration projects with various STEM agencies and research institutions – the U.S. Department of Energy and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Telecommunications and Information Agency, U.S. Census Open Innovation Lab, and others–, on multiple federally funded impactful initiatives such as: 1) Research collaboration projects on intelligent traffic management automation and optimization, electrification and decarbonization; leveraging smart districts infrastructure, AI, connected and automated vehicles and digital twin platforms to develop a small-scale traffic network testbed in Coral Gables to reduce carbon emissions, traffic congestion, costs and accidents; 2) Global Cities Technology Challenge think tank, cybersecurity symposia, strategic summits, smart cities action clusters and superclusters leadership collaborations that pivot on know-how, standards and best practices to implement advanced technological solutions for communities nationwide; 3) Smart Regions supercluster and Digital Inclusion Leadership Network collaborations, improving access to broadband for communities nationwide; 4) The Opportunity Project sprint with participating tech teams from industry and academia, developing multiple solutions and digital literacy programs to help Coral Gables small businesses and workforce leverage ecommerce, digital marketing, cloud, cybersecurity, and other tools to thrive in the digital economy and securely connect with customers and suppliers, and other impactful products.
These smart city STEM R&D collaborations must always align with the needs and priorities of the communities we serve, and the vision, mission, and strategic goals of the municipal government and all the participating organizations, with clear objectives and practical and measurable outcomes. For example, from Coral Gables’ standpoint, that often means researching and developing solutions that help improve traffic safety and mobility, lowering carbon emissions, improving citizen engagement and communications, preventing crime and increasing situational awareness, creating jobs and economic opportunities for all, improving operational efficiencies and lowering costs, increasing quality and customer satisfaction of city services, accelerating post-pandemic recovery, fostering digital literacy and workforce upskilling, improving resiliency and sustainability of natural and organizational resources and citizen services, and other needs and priorities.
These collaborative R&D projects will require a pragmatic and systematic approach that leads to minimum viable products and tangible results with quantitative and qualitative benefits for communities and customers of all organizations involved. Depending on the complexity of the project, it may also require a vetted framework to manage the business processes and procedural intricacies related to funding sources and mechanisms, legal and policy compliance in a highly regulated environment, partnership agreements and rules of engagement such as memoranda of understanding, data sharing agreements, intellectual property and patents management plans and others. These projects also require adequate governance and risk management mechanisms to establish a security baseline and change management controls throughout the development lifecycle of the project.
Civic innovation rarely occurs in silos or in a bubble. It requires taking the initiative with active outreach and intellectual curiosity, sharing lessons learned and success stories with openness and transparency, constantly connecting opportunities between diverse organizations and potential collaborators, and fostering a team culture of proactive communication, always open to learn from others and connect the dots for positive change and civic good. In some cases, it also requires taking calculated risks and increasing the visibility of projects, frameworks and programs. In the end, in addition to the direct benefits of Smart City R&D collaboration projects in our local community (MVP’s and prototypes for residents, businesses and visitors), there is a butterfly effect that continues propagating on its own over time that is the probability that the external stakeholders of our research partners –customers, students, patients, employees, shareholders– become participants themselves of our own Smart City ecosystem, altogether acting as a force multiplier that triggers other synergies and positive impacts beyond the initial objectives of the partnership.
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