High capacity? Low latency? High security? Low cost? All networks are not created equal, so how should smart communities think about mapping the services they want to offer to the network technologies available? Panelists will discuss the requirements for different smart city services and how communities should think about supporting them from a network infrastructure and management perspective.

Case Study Discussion on Fort Smith, Arkansas and Austin, Texas. Hear firsthand how the Cities of Fort Smith and Austin are fulfilling their mobility visions by implementing cost-effective ATSPM and Automated Traffic Signal Retiming solutions to better manage intersection traffic conditions and overall network operations, even during the time of Covid.

There’s a reason the smart city movement has taken hold. With new insights from digitally connected systems, governments can deliver services more efficiently, improve quality of life, and drive innovation in everything from mobility to public safety, energy management, and more. This panel will look at some of the most compelling use cases in the field today, and how municipal leaders can make a significant and positive impact with the smart city technologies they deploy.

The future of wireless technology isn’t in a lab. It’s in the connected communities, campuses, companies, and military bases where people live and work. This panel will examine the advantages of real-world, city-scale testbeds – how they can accelerate innovation and ensure that communities benefit from the technology breakthroughs that scientists engineer.

Growing amounts of data are available in multiple organizations in a city. Cities must begin and/or continue to share, in confidence, data across organizations to insure intelligent utilization of precious funds, assets and resources. Furthermore, cities must be able to assess and understand cross-organizational and cross-vertical impacts resulting from proposed departmental projects as well as to be able to provide, share and visualize these impacts in multiple dimensions. This panel will show the power and necessity of a big data platform that can integrate data layers across departments and verticals and provide simulation and visualization capabilities for intelligent decision-making and risk management. The panel will provide real-world examples of smart city projects (including some of the following - lighting, solar potential, security, 5G small cell deployments, multi-modal mobility and well-being), the importance of the data policy approved by public and private partners and the foundational 3D digital city twins upon which all data/results can be imported, crossed, created, visualized and shared with city employees and residents alike.

According to the EPA, more than 267 million tons of municipal solid waste was generated in the United States in 2017. The garbage truck does an amazing job collecting that waste; but there are more than four million miles of navigable roadways across our 50 states and an endless number of problems - beyond waste - that litter these thoroughfares. Roads get snow on them, creating dangerous driving conditions. Roads need to be swept and cleaned to keep traffic flowing. And roads get potholes, requiring immediate attention before they claim a vehicle’s front axle as an unassuming victim. Additionally, our roads have houses and storefronts along them that might be abandoned; buildings that might be covered in graffiti; and damaged street signs that might dot their path - all creating quality of life ills for our communities. But what if we could proactively deal with these issues and create better, safer and cleaner streets without adding more personnel to government budgets and more equipment to our already congested streets? By equipping existing government fleets with the right technology, and embedding a mission to transform a city service model from reactive to proactive, we can indeed do this very thing. Learn how - on the backs of the vehicles that pick up your trash, sweep your street, and plow your roads - the smart city trail is being blazed.

Hear a diverse panel of public and private sector experts discuss potential impacts to advanced mobility trends post 2020 as global urbanization, workforce and mobility patterns shifted in a matter of months.

Anixter will moderate a session with key SME's and project stakeholders that have proven experience in planning, building and deploying infrastructure to enable smart communities. The market forces of the Digital Divide, adjacency of Utility infrastructure, goals of Smart Cities and driving demands of EDGE devices are all coming together to provide new opportunities beyond what we could ever imagine. Through more collaboration among project owners there is an opportunity to achieve better Management, User Experience, Security, Insights and Control and ultimately improved return on Infrastructure.

Please join us for a panel of local government leaders from across the US, with PayIt as moderator, to discuss how to deliver a modern eGov Platform for all agencies and government levels with a single-citizen-sign-on. Learn how a cloud-based platform approach to eGov services delivers real outcomes for digital engagement. Bonus Content: hear how each of these cities and counties launched citizen-facing COVID19 services in just a few days.

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the digital divide as never before. It has highlighted how critical broadband infrastructure is to empower city’s communities: whether it is for education, health, remote work, or other social & care services. Cities have a decisive role to play, particularly to enable those who suffer the most from such gap: the underserved ones. In this panel we’ll look at the most pressing needs of different communities, understand the existing barriers and explore the technologies and models to address them and accelerate the deployment of digital services for cities and communities in urgent need.

The city of Walla Walla, Washington is leveraging their Advanced Metering Infrastructure to realize the vision of a Smart Utility Network, powering applications across the water cycle such as pressure monitoring in the distribution system and level monitoring in a creek prone to flooding. These applications are providing insights and improvements in the areas of non-revenue water, asset management, operational efficiency, and disaster prevention and control. This presentation will explore their journey from traditional AMI to achieving a Smart Utility Network and how it’s paving the way for a true Smart City.

The mobility industry is changing at lightning speed – new mobility providers, services and sectors are cropping up daily. Automotive OEMs are making huge investments in electric mobility, and prompted by covid, are offering new ways to engage with customers. Ridehail companies are offering transportation planning to government customers. Micromobility companies may be on the verge of profitability. Yet, city governments – key cogs in implementing new mobility options at scale – are far behind as they grapple with an unprecedented public health crisis, record rates of unemployment, and civil unrest. In a time of extreme urban innovation, how can cities and mobility companies meet consumer demand for more sustainable, efficient and seamless transportation? How likely are AVs going to be a part of the equation? What are some of the most promising paths forward and can they be replicated?

Since 1913, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has helped create and maintain a safe and reliable multimodal transportation system that connects people and communities across Oregon; from the days of horse-drawn road scrapers to today’s computer-operated machinery and solar highways. In 2018 -- guided by its commitment to using innovative​ program design and technologies to solve transportation problems -- ODOT partnered with Ameresco on a lighting pilot program aimed at improving public safety, reducing energy costs and freeing up resources for other projects and maintenance across ODOT’s system. Financed by an energy savings performance contract (ESPC) that allows the program’s energy savings to be applied to its costs, Ameresco will replace more than 10,000 low-efficiency highway lights in the Portland metro area with LEDs to create brighter, safer roadways that are more energy efficient and less costly to maintain. Speakers on this panel will provide attendees with an overview on the ODOT pilot program, outline the planning and procurement process, identify common obstacles and explain how to overcome them. The panel will also discuss various financing options available for major energy efficiency projects such as this one and describe some of the latest technologies they involve.

This panel will discuss best practices for launching and leading a Smart Cities Accelerator that was purposefully designed to integrate city leadership with innovation and industry solutions.Through public/private partnerships and emphasizing a collaborative and needs-based solutions-seeking and cross-domain problem-solving approach, the startups in the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator Cohort 1 integrated their solutions to resiliency, mobility, infrastructure, and digital transformation, into Houston's civic fabric, through seeking pilots with the City of Houston and other organizations.This panel will tell the story and highlight the journey of Cohort 1's startups, showcasing how the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator was designed to operate in a cross-domain way, bring historically siloed areas together, and develop smart cities solutions for these areas that are needs-based and sustainable.This panel will feature the pilot results of startups in the Accelerator's first cohort.The panel will also give specific examples of how everyone -- from students, to adults, to government decision makers, to C-level executives -- can take an active and proactive role in engaging with their city.

What’s the best way to connect communities that still don’t have sufficient broadband service? A recent study by US Ignite and Altman Solon suggests a combination of public and private investment is the right way to move forward. Join partners from Altman Solon as they present major findings from the report Broadband Models for Unserved and Underserved Communities examining five different network and service options for broadband deployment. Then tune in for US Ignite interviews with leaders from Lincoln, Nebraska and Westminster, Maryland. These interviews cover two of the five broadband models in depth, including how communities should make their own decisions on deployment based on demographics, existing infrastructure, and available funding sources.

The development of cellular network technologies, LTE, NB-IoT, and 5G, has fundamentally changed the ways cities can provide services/solutions to their residents. Often lost in the conversation around cellular technology is its ability to provide resilient communication for municipalities and their constituents, especially for smart water distribution systems. As the technology advances on the consumer side to provide more bandwidth and speed it continues to advance on the LP-WAN side as well. Ubiquitous networks like LTE-M and NB-IOT expand in coverage and provide a perfect use case for devices on a smart water network that transmit small amounts of data at a consistent interval. This panel will discuss how the City of Columbia, SC utilized a full suite of smart water technologies to improve the resiliency and reliability of their water operations. It will also discuss how Columbia has utilized that information for enhanced consumer engagement with their own stakeholders, which has been a key pillar of their City mission over the last few years. On the panel, we’ll hear from the City of Columbia on why they decided to move in this direction, how they made the determination, and how they are implementing it. We’ll also hear from consultants involved in the discussion on what some of the most important drivers of these types of projects are, and lessons learned for future projects.

This panel of city leaders and innovators will discuss their mobility priorities and the biggest challenges they are facing in transforming urban mobility. The moderated panel will look at best practices and lessons the cities have learned as they cope with a changing mobility landscape, industry disruptions, and the complexities of implementing new services.

It might seem impossible to access leading edge energy data, planning, analysis, and technology expertise for your smart city recovery strategies without the resources of a mega-city. Learn about resources residing in the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for transforming energy systems for equitable, sustainable, and resilient results. Hear how your city can leverage past data and analysis investments to support a variety of large- and small-city efforts. Panelists will share case studies illustrating NREL’s world-class capabilities on real projects, with real cities, for real impact

The City of Memphis is a community with real economic and societal challenges; however new energy and investment promises to catalyze an underserved community. More than $19B+ in urban investment is being deployed including Union Row, a transformative $1B 50-acre, mixed-use development which will be designed "smart from the start." This unique public private partnership seeks to activate the 36 strands of high-speed, high quality, but unused fiber to build a civic innovation platform. The intended result will be a new focus on job and talent creation through technology startups and entrepreneurship as method of solving city challenges.

Renée Peet, VP of Marketing for Sensus, a Xylem brand, offers her viewpoint on why every resiliency plan should start with a city's infrastructure, and shares how innovative investments in new technology can actually free up capital needed for other smart city initiatives. Using recent success stories from cities around the world, Renee will help you communicate why it's more important than ever before that smart cities start with smart infrastructure.

Resilient design is defined as “the intentional design of buildings, landscapes, communities, and regions in response to vulnerabilities to disaster and disruption of normal life”. This panel of leaders will discuss smart solutions reshaping critical community needs in the areas of energy, water and waste management. Learn how cities are getting smarter when it comes to critical infrastructure and community services while anticipating future challenges and disruptions.

Big Data has become a tool widely adopted for urban development - big data is collected constantly and provides city planners with a much, much more precise tool to manage the things that are important to a city. This panel will discuss data driven urban development and, as a tool, how big data offers significant benefits for planners and others in the business of planning, managing, and improving cities.

The global pandemic is forcing city and industry leaders alike to adjust and learn how to live in a constant state of disruption. Some city leaders are seeing this as a chance to “reboot” as described in a recent Smart Cities Connect article. This movement calls for a new type of leader who brings people together, welcomes new perspectives and new processes. We’ve assembled a panel of those ‘Smart City Disruptors’ who will talk about their approaches, lessons learned and offer advice for the future.

Many cities struggle with their enterprise data strategy. Valuable data is often locked in departmental line of business applications and databases creating separate data silos which cannot be easily leveraged for actionable intelligence. As cities start to deploy IoT connected devices, such as traffic or stormwater sensors, they desire to leverage these new data streams for automated alerts and dashboards. Some city departments have also started to use cloud based SaaS applications creating additional data silos in the cloud. The Town of Cary, NC, has partnered with Dell technologies to implement data integration as a service and a data broker architecture which allows the city to easily access and process data from the IoT edge to the data center to the cloud. We will explore how cities can break down data silos and more easily turn data into intelligence.

Many cities are unable to develop a robust smart city plan due to the time and effort needed to get feedback from stakeholders across all its departments. Couple that with the overwhelming number of technology options on the market, and many cities find themselves at a standstill. We will discuss how the city of Ruston, Louisiana, was able to overcome these obstacles. Ruston decided to use a web-based smart city assessment tool as a cost-effective and speedy method to gain the insights it needed. During this session, we’ll walk through the city’s approach and showcase the results of Ruston’s partnership with the E Source Technology Planning and Implementation Division, previously, UtiliWorks Consulting. We will highlight which elements of a smart city Ruston is prioritizing as well as key risks and gaps for the city to mitigate. Lastly, we will focus on how cities can empower voices throughout their community and optimize their planning efforts.

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, IoT will become one of the most valuable tools in the smart city transformation, especially in the evolving world of parking and mobility. This panel discussion will highlight three cities that are leveraging parking in their digital transformation journey. Attendees will hear each city leader’s perspective on dynamic consumer demand and how IoT strategies are being implemented to respond to emerging innovations and market trends.

The City of Chicago has installed over 156,000 smart streetlights in the first 2 years of its program to deploy 270,000 smart networked LED lights in one of the largest modernization projects in the world. Taking an integrated systems approach is enabling the City of Chicago to compress installation schedules, accelerate benefits to the community, ensure data integrity across back-office systems and enhance operational efficiency for ongoing system management. If you are considering or in the planning stages of a smart streetlight initiative, this session will help you prepare for what’s next with insight from Chicago's smart streetlight deployment, including best-practices and lessons learned from leading practitioners at the City of Chicago, Ameresco, Itron and TerraGo Technologies.

2020 has put crisis management to the test across all levels of local government. Learn how leading CIOs from across the country are relying on different types of data sets, including Zencity’s resident sentiment data, to help inform critical decisions, optimize internal and resident-facing communications, and track the performance of policies and initiatives.

One of the major problems in building smart cities is the fact that every city is a special case. This makes it difficult to build smart cities in a way that allows them to take advantage of their investment networking infrastructure. If you’ve downloaded the parking app for Denver, there is little chance it will work in Cleveland. If Colorado wants to provide an incentive to residents who conserve water, there may not be a universal way for customers to report their usage. Like any networked application, the benefits of the network are dependent upon communications with other applications on the network. The only way to make the networked opportunity scale is to agree on common communication methods. This can be done if everyone is using the same applications or if those applications are using the same types of standardized communications. This panel will explore the benefits, challenges and potential solutions around “standardizing” cities in order to ensure that cities, businesses and citizens reap the full benefits smart city projects.

Telecom companies are pursuing highly ambitious network upgrades for the rollout of 5G, but carriers and communities have different priorities when it comes to small cell permitting, infrastructure management, and civic need. Many local governments also lack the programs and processes necessary to meaningfully guide 5G deployments. This session will examine strategies for creating common ground, streamlining operations, and maximizing overall benefit. Panel participants will discuss not only the nitty gritty of regulatory requirements and access rights, but also where opportunities for collaboration exist in the joint effort to lead communities into a smarter, more connected future.

This moderated panel will explore and identify challenges and best practices presented by the participating cities. This session will focus on Urban Infrastructure (Buildings, Energy, Grid, Utilities, Resilience)

Effective communication builds better trust between government and the residents they serve. From navigating expectations of four unique generations to addressing political differences and budget uncertainties, local leaders have proven time again that civic engagement is a constant, evolving change. Now, facing the impacts of COVID-19, governments are managing even greater demands with fewer resources. Strategies that are repeatable, scalable, and purposeful, and that are quick to standup and implement, are top of mind for smart city leaders. Instead of creating disparate engagement tactics, what if governments had a powerful, long-term strategy to navigate remote civic engagement during times of disruption, all while accelerating mobility and maintaining online business continuity? Join this session to hear how innovative governments have improved public engagement through effective use of mobile apps to capture citizen attention and transparency dashboards to engage with residents in new, impactful ways.

The Smart Cities Connect Challenge is designed to bring together technology & solution providers working on next generation of Smart City solutions with investors, technology providers, and city leadership. Join us for a lighting round of pitches! Based on schedules, startups will be at the ready to answer your questions.

Virtual Residents for Vacant & Abandoned Properties, Nathan Armentrout, CASPER Security (innovator)

Citibot Automated Customer Service Platform for SMS and Webchat, Bratton Riley, Citibot, Inc. (innovator)

Lightweight Road Pricing for Cities of All Sizes, Paul Salama, ClearRoad (innovator)

A cost effective NPMD and cybersecurity solution specifically built for smart cities, Eyal Elyashiv, Cynamics (innovator)

Audio augmented reality for outdoor pedestrian navigation, Hugo Furtado, Dreamwaves GmbH (innovator)

Neighborhood Intel, Nigel Griswold, Dynamo Metrics (innovator)

The world's first Autonomous Traffic Management Platform, Jatish Patel, Flow Labs (innovator)

PAM, Jason Hutty, PAM Wayfinding Inc. (innovator)

Pixel8earth Platform, Sean Gorman, pixel8earth inc. (innovator)

buildee®, Oliver Davis, simuwatt Inc. (innovator)

Skyhook Solar Stations for Mobility Charging and Resilience, Daniel Delano, Skyhook Solar Corp. (innovator)

StormSensor's Terrapin Network: Google Traffic Maps for Sewers and Urban Flooding, Erin Rothman, StormSensor Inc (innovator)

A patented revolutionary way to store emergency drinking water, Howard Murray, Waterfull (innovator)

A panel of investment, accelerator, and corporate leadership discuss how to navigate through covid-19 times and how startups can maximize visibility and impact to potential funders and partners.

Cloud technology through voice and broadband has the power to completely change communities and to improve the lives of local residents and businesses. Partnering with a cloud provider has proven to be the most cost-effective and time-efficient way to start offering cloud services. However, not all clouds are created equal. When looking for a cloud partner, it can be easy to mistake fog for a cloud, and that can have dire results because the infrastructure, design and various ins and outs of the cloud are vital for you being able to efficiently leverage the technology and maximize your infrastructure. Together, we’ll walk through the cloud, and provide you with the understanding, working knowledge and questions should be asking in order to make a profitable decision. While also taking some time to share the secrets to driving sales and building strong customer management. By the end, you’ll be fully equipped to make technology decisions and select partners that you can be confident will help take you to cloud nine.

The panel will describe the process by which the City of Pittsburgh, Downtown Denver Partnership, and Old Dominion University have each used Victor Stanley Relay smart litter receptacles to improve their waste collection system. With a combined 1,450 smart trash containers, these organizations have increased operational efficiency, realized substantial cost savings, and re-prioritized tasks by using field data collected over more than one year of use. Covering the problems which are resolved by a smart litter system, the challenges of implementation, the most important data points to keep track of, and the benefits—both operational and environmental—of overhauling a waste collection system into one enhanced by sensors and data, this conversation demonstrates the “smart waste” differences between the city, university, and business improvement district settings. Touching on the addition of Relay dynamic routing to more efficiently navigate to each container, and an expanded suite of sensor functions capable of measuring important environmental factors—including pedestrian counting and pollution detection—this panel will describe a path to greater savings and more critical insight, gathered from use of the Relay system.

Learn how converged and intelligent infrastructure are key to transforming your cities and your entire urban fabric. Gain a crystal-clear understanding of how progressive communities are aligning efforts across multiple priorities to reduce costs, enable economic development and create the foundation to support these radical changes. We will be facing the “4th Industrial Revolution” as we deal with a confluence of technologies that will fundamentally change our world’s infrastructure. Come for a glimpse of the future, and leave with an understanding of the steps you must take to position your city for the impact of these exciting new technologies.

Cities today are looking to implement smart city initiatives, so they can better manage resources and assets, be more efficient and provide residents, businesses and visitors an enhanced city experience and quality of life. We will explore the role street lighting has on the digital transformation of cities across the U.S. and discuss methodologies to quickly deploy a wireless network for a connected citizen engagement. To accomplish their smart goals, cities need to have a robust wireless network that blends into the cityscape, avoiding the additional clutter of telecom equipment, and they must do so quickly to minimize disruption. Current Federal Regulations Surrounding Pole Attachments will be discussed. Smart poles, street lighting with wireless as a single infrastructure, can provide the connectivity and backbone for wireless, 5G and smart city applications in a form factor people are used to seeing every day. We will explore how Smart Street Lighting Poles can be the bridge to the digital divide and light inequity that currently exists in neighborhoods throughout the city while maintaining the neighborhood aesthetics.

This moderated panel will explore and identify challenges and best practices presented by the participating cities. This session will focus on Community Engagement (Policy, Funding, Commerce, Inclusion, Governance).

Join our Smart City Challenge startups, panelists, and investors for live networking and Q&A! Learn more about applying for Cohort 3 of The Ion Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator. Advance sign up encouraged!

Smart 50 Awards, in partnership with Smart Cities Connect, Smart Cities Connect Foundation, and US Ignite, annually recognize global smart cities projects, honoring the most innovative and influential work. This year, we honor those projects at a virtual Gala ceremony.

Cities share what it means to remain relevant, safe, and invested in a time of digital transformation. Hear about the unique challenges and opportunities facing city leaders and what the future may hold for connected communities.

Cities and other public jurisdictions possess extensive data assets and are adding new ones daily via smart technologies. They also face budget pressures to fund infrastructure upgrades and take on larger smart city projects. This panel will discuss new economic models for leveraging data to benefit the City – including when and how to standardize, aggregate, leverage, freely distribute and, when appropriate, monetize it.

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ American Cities Climate Challenge recognizes that cities are critical innovators and leaders in environmental protection and that local leadership is even more important in the face of a hostile federal government and increasing global urbanization. When it comes to mobility in particular, many of the most critical decisions are made at the city level. For decades, progressive cities have led efforts to reduce dependence on private, single occupancy, gas-guzzling cars and trucks. Through the Challenge, cities are doubling down on these efforts while also increasing their focus on newer strategies like transportation electrification. Many decarbonization pathway studies indicate that meeting our carbon goals requires that we electrify everything that moves. Cities have unique and important roles to play in transportation electrification. They can electrify their own fleets; accelerate electrification of public transit and shared services like Uber and Lyft; promote electrified micro-mobility services and multimodal hubs; support and encourage the development of robust electric vehicle (EV) charging networks on private property and in their own right-of-way; update building codes to ensure new construction supports EV charging; educate their residents and businesses about the benefits of electric vehicles; and ensure that communities of color and other frontline communities benefit from these new technologies. Technologies and business models are changing quickly, challenging cities to develop flexible strategies and nimble responses.

Commercial building energy policy is a rapidly evolving component of the energy and emission reducing initiatives of major cities. Over 30 cities across the United States have enacted policies with the intention of bringing the commercial building sector into the 21st century, and part of the effort to curb energy demand. While some cities have simply adopted benchmarking policies, which require building owners to report their energy usage in comparison to their peers, other cities, like New York and D.C., have made their efforts more aggressive with emission limits and strict penalties for non-compliance. This panel will give a broad overview of all methods of energy and emission regulation currently in municipal legislation: benchmarking, auditing, and performance targets. The panel will then discuss the data and results surrounding these policies, and in this way evaluate best practices for the future of efficiency in the built environment of cities. Accomplishing these goals will require actionable data and a public/private partnership involving city governments, utilities, service providers, policy advocates, and private building owners.

In June 2016, the city of Columbus was awarded $40 million from the US Department of Transportation and $10 million from Paul G. Allen Philanthropies (formerly Vulcan Inc.) as part of the Smart City Challenge. The challenge was designed to accelerate technology integration into a mid-sized city in the United States. The City of Columbus leveraged this investment in our residents. Three years into Smart Columbus, there is much to celebrate, as well as many lessons learned from the regional collaboration. This session will be an overview of the Smart Columbus projects, a candid share of what worked and what did not; as well as a sharing of early results from our projects that stemmed from our research with Ohio State.

This panel will answer and overcome common questions and objections associated with the decision to buy smart technology, specifically IoT devices and sensors. You will learn about the benefits of selling and installing smart technology. The panelists include representatives from various verticals associated with IoT - from manufactures of sensors and IoT hardware (KMC Controls) to tech leaders (Intel), and from integrators (LONG Building Technologies) to end-users who have successfully convinced their leadership to purchase an IoT solution and have started installing the hardware (Chicago Public Schools). With such a diverse set of panelists, this robust discussion will be beneficial to end-users, contractors, and integrators alike. Panelists will discuss security, implementation, costs, scalability, ROI, reluctance to change, and how closed communications protocols are impeding growth.anel will be beneficial to end-users and contractors alike. We will discuss security, implementation, costs, scalability, ROI, reluctance to change, and how closed communications protocols are impeding growth.

This moderated panel will explore and identify challenges and best practices presented by the participating cities. This session will focus on Urban Operations (Lighting, Water, Waste, Planning, Emergency Response).

As Battery Electric Bus deployment becomes a significant part of everyday transit applications the issue of range anxiety becomes a greater topic of concern and discussion. This panel will provide an update from vehicle manufacturers, transit agencies and industry experts to present updates on technology and real life application data for those considering deployment of Battery Electric Buses into their fleets. Not only is battery technology advancing at a rapid pace, but improvements are occurring in drive train efficiency, development of low rolling resistance tires as well as improvements in the efficiency of ancillary systems such as HVAC, air compressors, power steering etc. This has driven available range beyond 200 miles which meets the large percentage of transit applications.The other part of this equation for deployment of buses is route planning and realizing that buses do not have to be purchased to meet 100% of all of an agency’s route applications.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will introduce you to a suite of new, publicly available energy planning data and tools with perspective from a local energy leader. The State and Local Planning for Energy (SLOPE) Beta platform provides localized energy efficiency potential, renewable energy generation potential, and energy consumption projections. The Renewable Energy Procurement Analysis Tool (REPAT) delivers the renewable procurement options available for each U.S. city and county as well as municipal franchise agreement expiration dates for 3,500 cities. New resilience and microgrid planning tools will also be introduced.

Small and medium-sized cities (under 75,000) face many of the same issues as large cities, but lack the resources to address them on their own. Convened by ELGL (Engaging Local Government Leaders), the Small Places, Big Ideas Innovation Cohort has brought together 11 small cities from Portland Maine to San Luis Obispo California to collaborate in new ways. Together they can leverage peer learning, pool resources, and innovate beyond their borders with the goal of solving intractable common urban challenges. Through the use of a virtual team, dedicated city staff, moderation from a trusted organization, and a digital platform, geographically dispersed cities are able to come together to scope the challenge, develop common evaluation criteria, solicit & assess solution proposals, and conduct innovation pilots. As a group they are able to create a compelling market opportunity and effectively engage solution vendors. This first cohort has been working together since June 2019 and will share their learnings and outcomes. It has been so successful that additional theme and regional based cohorts are already being launched. Learn from some of the cities implementing these strategies and the facilitators bringing them together.

A smart city utilizes IoT sensors, actuators, and information technology to connect and power components across the city impacting every layer of a city from under the streets to the air citizens breathe. On average people spend nearly 90% of their time indoors yet the building systems and air quality we live and work in are outdated yet they impact everything from health and productivity. At the most fundamental level, smart buildings deliver useful building services that make occupants more productive by converging building automation systems (BAS) with IP smart LED lighting systems . Through sensors and timers now embedded into light fixtures and powered by PoE, air quality, temperature, sound, occupancy, and other sensors provide new levels of environmental comfort and actionable information. A new Utility network is emerging that powers and connects smart building and smart city technology.

Often times, cyber security is an afterthought when implementing smart city projects. Join us in a panel discussion on the importance of keeping cybersecurity at the forefront of smart city deployments, and how the NCC is taking a programmatic approach to supporting smart cities.

COVID is one of the most disruptive events in our lifetimes with enormous impacts on mobility systems. This session will look at four key areas affected by the pandemic: commuting, transit, long-distance travel, and freight and supply chain impacts. Join this group of industry experts as they tackle how to measure and respond to unprecedented and far-reaching disruption.

Launching a successful municipal broadband initiative takes cooperation and integration across a city organization. Learn best practices for handling communication, building relationships, driving collaboration, and cooperation.

This panel highlights how one city, the City and County of Denver, has implemented various engagement and outreach methods across departments as part of its strategic goals in improving community engagement. Denver is a diverse, rapidly growing and evolving city, and equitable public engagement is a major area of focus. Special consideration is given to how the city can engage with its residents in an efficient and influential way, and how the different outcomes and datasets created in the processes can be taken into use across the departments in the city, to create a more livable city for its residents. The panel is moderated by Anna Broberg and Maarit Kahila from Maptionnaire, one of the leading online community engagement solution providers, and the panelists include representatives from three Denver agencies who are leveraging innovative public engagement tools.