Participate in a discussion with specialists in digital transformation to gain insights into how this process is revolutionizing infrastructure sectors like smart grids, small nuclear reactors, and bandwidth infrastructure. This approach is strategic and inter-disciplinary, utilizing digital technology to enhance the performance, management, and user experience of these advanced services. Digital transformation plays a critical role in making infrastructure systems not just more efficient and reliable, but also adept at addressing the rapidly evolving technological landscape and the changing requirements of the public

Cities are leveraging technologies in multiple ways to solve challenges around sustainability, mobility, citizen engagement and public safety. However, to implement these solutions, cities need to create a sustainable, inclusive, and innovative environment. Glendale is invested in fostering a collaborative and co-creative smart culture for its citizens and stakeholders. Their smart city initiative e.g., “Modern Data Platform” designed to serve 28 different city departments, from Fire to Finance and Water to Waste Management, it includes numerous use cases and vendors, such as Microsoft, Tyler Technologies, Oracle, Esri, Motorola, Snowflake, and Collibra. Partners like I&I are helping cities build solutions to tackle these challenges. In this session you will learn how the City of Glendale was able to work with I&I and its partner, Collibra in creating multiple smart city solutions and aggregating data from multiple applications across the city for reporting and analytics. The city is using GIS for governance and able to expose these through the concept of digital twins. You will learn how Glendale was able to get multiple stakeholders to collaborate, identify the challenges, work with the right partners to strategize and how the innovative solutions for Superbowl 57 impacted the citizens lives and cities growth.

With a huge innovation to transit, the Swift Rails panel will discuss what individualized, elevated, semi-autonomous transit vehicles mean for the future of cities. How do you best make use of transit that is forever sustainable, both environmentally and financially? Start before your roads are congested. Tomorrow’s infrastructure will favor sustainable transportation that combines on-demand, comfort-of-a-car transit with a walkable, bikeable, and more livable city – make your city smarter.

Meeting decarbonization, sustainability and resilience goals requires rapid action and creative approaches. Utilities and communities each face this complex challenge that they are unable to solve on their own. By seeking opportunities to plan together and building relationships among key stakeholders, utilities and communities can more effectively set goals and make faster progress toward achieving them. Working together, they can accelerate the pace of efforts to create a modern, more resilient energy system that facilitates two-way flow of electricity and accommodates a large increase in clean, distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar and EVs. Collaboration better positions utilities and communities to effectively plan for growth, secure federal funding, and gain assets – like broadband connectivity, skilled workers, IoT sensors and data – that unlock opportunities to overcome inequities and improve quality of life. It also helps utilities better understand the needs of the communities they serve so they can refine program offerings, anticipate potential community concerns and make more effective investments. This panel will feature examples from across the country of utilities and communities working proactively to strengthen stakeholder relationships and plan collaboratively for more resilient, sustainable, just, thriving communities.

This discussion is focussed on the integration of data collected by the smart city through its sensors, citizens’ feedback, and cross-integration to bring out insights into the environment. It will enable the collective intelligence from the city to solve the day-to-day inconvenience faced by the citizens. This utilizes machine learning, Large Language Models with selective models of AI to automate the process. It focusses more on the reasons behind a situation rather than predicting a situation. Attendees will get an insight into using the data collected by various technologies installed in the city merging it together with citizen feedback to make the system more responsive to the environment. A walk-through in an easy-to-deploy platform to try out in their own city.

The mobility revolution is shaping the way people move around cities and is helping advance policy goals. Beyond autonomous vehicles and ride sharing, parking is the next “smart” transformation that will help improve mobility in cities and campuses for the benefit of all. Smart parking solutions enable easier driving ecosystems, help lower traffic congestion, improve safety and support a city’s sustainability goals. Data from smart parking solutions can be a valuable resource for improving mobility by taking the guesswork out of knowing how assets are being used. These technologies can be a great resource in collecting relevant insights such as space use, parking availability, demand over time, duration and turnover. However, this data goldmine can only be helpful to cities if it is reliable, detailed and accurate.

Cities and Utilities are tasked every single day with huge responsibilities - all of them seemingly more urgent than the last. Critical infrastructure needs require immediate attention, customer service complaints that take up hours of time on the phone, and meeting after meeting after meeting means that the truly important items that could greatly impact the efficiency and quality of service provided to your constituents never gets done. This panel will focus on how you can use the as-a-Service model to solve for critical needs without the need to devote hours and hours of time to implementing them - ensuring the upgrade programs needed are complete and giving you time back to address other urgent items.

In this opening presentation, we will explore cutting-edge technologies that will profoundly impact urban development and how municipalities operate, provide services and interact with their communities. We will review technologies such as GenAI, space communications, and climate technologies and discuss why these technologies matter and how they can help tackle issues such as environmental sustainability, resilience, and resource scarcity as well as helping cities to continue to be the vibrant, joyful places where the majority of people work and live. This talk is a guide to thinking about the dynamics of tech innovation in the context of urban evolution and the realities local government operations to help you stay at the forefront of smart city trends.

Somethings have changed with the conversations around street lighting. While cost savings still matter, the emphasis on public safety, equity, and the environment has grown. This year Memphis and Philadelphia started lighting expansion and conversion projects, taking a progressive approach to optimize lighting to solve some of their toughest challenges. The Philadelphia Streetlight Improvement Project (PSIP) will transform 130,000 streetlights into efficient LED systems, enhancing visibility and ensuring quicker replacements for residents over its two-year span, marking it as Philadelphia’s most significant energy conservation endeavor. “As we move towards a resilient and climate-ready Philadelphia, the Philly Streetlight Improvement Project exemplifies the win-win infrastructure investments the city needs,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. “LED streetlights will enhance the quality of life for all Philadelphians by providing better, more reliable lighting. It will also help us advance toward our city’s goals for Vision Zero, by providing better visibility to reduce traffic crashes, as well as ensure our continued progress toward meeting our 2030 energy and climate goals.” With data indicating a 3x higher night-time fatal crash risk, cities like Memphis and Philadelphia are taking action. A study by the University of Chicago's Urban Labs linked increased lighting to a 36% crime reduction. When Memphis Mayor Strickland announced the city’s new project to upgrade 84,000 streetlight fixtures, he focused on safety saying, “No longer will criminals have safe harbor to operate under cover of darkness.” Hear from experts including the Philadelphia Energy Authority about the strategy and implementation behind some of the year’s biggest lighting projects in the US.

The majority of smart cities projects resemble one-hit-wonders - they don't go past the pilot stage; are application and context specific; are not implemented at scale; do not explicitly integrate community input during design, planning or operation; and largely consist of isolated platforms or systems of operation without integration. Carnegie Mellon University's Metro21: Smart Cities Institute report, Sustaining Connected Communities Rooted in Solving Societal Challenges, supported by the National Science Foundation, sought to address the critical challenges that are impacting the deployment of smart cities technology beyond the pilot stage. The thought-provoking report details how, who and what is needed to better integrate and scale smart and connected community technology deployments in mobility/transportation, energy, climate resilience, ecosystem services and cover multiple applications and technologies. This panel of diverse thought leaders and practitioners will discuss and build upon the report's findings and share with attendees how to move forward to enable and ensure smart cities projects go the distance and deploy solutions to the significant technical, policy, and socioeconomic challenges to integration and scaling of connected communities technologies.

In May 2023, the White House issued the National Standards Strategy (NSS/CET) for Critical and Emerging Technologies (NSS/CET), which cites Smart Communities as a specific application of critical and emerging technologies that affect global economy and national security. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been designated as the federal agency for developing an implementation strategy, and thus the NIST program on smart communities—the Global Community Technology Consortium (GCTC)—will both help shape, and will be shaped by, the National Standards Strategy. This panel will provide an overview of the NSS/CET and present some of the considerations in the strategy relevant to standardizing smart cities applications and methodologies. Four technology development efforts from among member GCTC smart communities are presented to highlight how specific GCTC communities are developing technologies that are standardizable, scalable, and available to inform other cities' efforts.

Fire services have historically operated based on traditions established in the early 1900s. This longstanding approach, deeply rooted in culture, has seen slow change. However, the digital age and the demand for efficiency and safety in urban environments are spurring a shift towards modernization and integration in connected community initiatives. Hear from two leading agencies about the journey of transformation in fire services, encompassing the emerging smart initiatives such as public safety clouds, and strategic operational data systems, a real-time data sharing platform developed by the City of Carlsbad. Attendees will get a comprehensive understanding of the potential of data, GIS technology, and multi-agency cooperation in revolutionizing emergency services. Topics to be discussed include the development and impact of “public safety clouds,” the significance of real-time mapping and dispatch insights for decision-making, emergency communication nurse systems in dispatch centers, and innovative deployment models that challenge traditional norms. Moderated by David Graham, Co-chair for Civic Innovation at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University, you will engage in an interactive session with top leaders in fire and emergency services as they get real about technology disruption and the future of digital transformation. They will bring in their unique perspectives, sharing experiences, challenges, and the future aspirations for a world that prioritizes safety through innovation and connection.

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 learned.

As cities commit to becoming smart cities, new challenges will emerge. For proven solutions to deliver real improvements, we must consider the challenge of scaling broadband infrastructure that smart cities depend on—fiber, small cells and towers. Cross-sector collaboration between government, tech companies, community and service providers will be crucial to addressing barriers and maintaining momentum. Join us as our panel discusses how to scale smart city solutions as cities takes steps to improve quality of life for residents.

This panel will offer a comprehensive look at the key aspects of smart city development – Architecture, Data and Cybersecurity. Experts will discuss successful case studies, the integration of technologies like IoT and AI, and the architectural choices that consider all key stakeholders including citizens. The panel will also tackle critical issues and pest practices surrounding the design and management of big data ecosystems, including security and privacy concerns, as well as best practices for data protection. Cybersecurity will be another focal point, exploring both technological solutions and the role of human awareness in securing smart city infrastructures. The session will conclude with a look at future trends, including the transition from smart cities to cognitive cities, emphasizing the importance of building resilient, secure, and sustainable urban environments.

For seven months, LVT deployed dozens of mobile surveillance units across Opelika, AL and Paducah, KY. The units were placed in the parking lots of 14 retailers such as Advance Auto Parts, Kroger, JCPenney, Lowe’s, Walgreens, and Walmart. The calls for service pre and post the ACCESS Taskforce deployment and the total impact was severe:

• Shoplifting dropped by 40%
• Disorderly conduct fell by 31%
• Burglaries were cut by 54%
• Trespassing was reduced by 45%
• And more

In recent years, adoption of sustainable practices by utilities and cities has transitioned into closer monitoring of carbon regulations and decarbonization initiatives. This shift is taking place during a pivotal time as the world continues to grapple with the increasing impacts of climate disruption, ranging from power outages, water scarcity and severe weather events. In this session, speakers will paint a picture of the urgent need for cities and utilities to lay the technological foundation for smart cities to support sustainability initiatives, carbon reduction and more. Beginning with a proven anchor application, such as smart street lighting, enables the ability to layer additional applications over time to create better-connected communities and experience benefits that span far beyond lighting. Further, utility companies can play a key role in supporting the smart city of the future as many are leading in the deployment of IoT-connected smart lighting and networks. Timing is everything. Cities and utilities across the U.S. are taking advantage of funding programs like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to accelerate the adoption of sustainable solutions in energy and water. Learn how smart lighting can illuminate a path for cities and utilities to collaborate to reduce energy consumption, lower carbon emissions, protect wildlife, mitigate heat islands, improve safety and more.

Our panel will showcase industry leading experts and thought leaders in physical security discussing how implementing and automating security puts the Smart in Smart Cities. With an ever-evolving threat landscape, safety and security issues require vigilant monitoring of environmental sensors, cameras, access points, communications equipment, and cybersecurity devices. That data is analyzed, and threats identified in real-time for prompt responses. Thus, Security is paramount to a city’s safety and emergency response plans. And technology plays a key role in the automation of Emergency Response Teams (ERT). Cities are adding technology such as Autonomous Security Officers (ASOs), Smart Cameras, License Plate Readers, IoT sensors, Smart Lighting, Access Control, Digital Kiosks, etc. which serve as deterrents, improve situational awareness and improve response times, as well as combine to be force multipliers that leverage analytics that alert and save lives. Security equipment must be affordable, scalable, reliable, tamper resistant, have a minimal footprint, integrate with existing systems, and yet be easy to use and intuitive. Thus, the challenge is to leverage technology to maximize safety without breaking the budget or unduly hindering the residents in their daily activities.

In the urgent race to address climate change, cities are developing and implementing climate action strategies to reduce GHG emissions and combat risks such as extreme heat and flooding. Cities are increasingly employing digital tools for planning, community engagement, and monitoring progress, and implementing smart technologies to accelerate impact. Learn more about the value of these tools and technologies and see specific examples of how they have been successfully utilized.

Join ParkMobile and HONK for the game-changing HONK + ParkMobile Roadshow. Immerse yourself in an electrifying panel discussion that transcends boundaries and reveals the untapped potential of the parking landscape. Discover cutting-edge trends, transformative technologies, and visionary strategies that will reshape how we navigate a Smarter Way to Park. From data-driven intelligence to reimagined customer engagement, this interactive experience will ignite your imagination and accelerate your organization's growth. Prepare to challenge the status quo, embrace innovation, and accelerate your organization's growth at the HONK + ParkMobile Roadshow. Unveil opportunities and lead the way to a dynamic, customer-centric tomorrow. Accelerate your journey to parking excellence now. Are you ready to accelerate your journey to parking excellence?

This session will showcase 5G use cases and capabilities for local agencies using drones for public safety and smart cities applications. Use cases showcased will include remote site assessment using AI/ML at the 5G network edge for identification of hazardous materials and real time video streaming and remote operations for local emergency management agencies. Discussion includes 5G enabled drone operations beyond visual line of sight, command and control over 5G, real time video streaming, remote site assessment, multi-access edge computing, video processing and AI/ML model for image classification.

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.

In an era where light pollution is a growing concern, sustainable communities are increasingly embracing the power of smart lighting to minimize their impact on the night sky. By adopting dark sky-friendly lighting practices, communities are not only reducing light pollution but also saving energy and creating more livable spaces without compromising public safety. Innovations in LEDs like warmer CCTs (cooler color temperatures) and smart lighting technologies allow for more precise control over when and how light is emitted, reducing unnecessary illumination. In this session, attendees will discover more about: - The latest advancements in LED and smart lighting technology - Importance of maintaining night sky and environmental responsibility - Balancing dark-sky initiatives with public safety concerns - Current dark sky-friendly programs and resources

Equitable energy solutions enable all people to participate in the transition to sustainable energy, and prioritizes equitable distribution of energy benefits and burdens. The path to energy equity and justice must include diversity – among teams, communities, and collaborations – to transition from clean energy for some, to clean energy for ALL. Equitable energy systems are defined and driven by the people who live and work within the community, and as the communities’ energy needs; and as conditions and priorities change over time, the goals and objectives need to dynamically change as well. Join the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and our partners, for a discussion about accelerating the clean energy transition, and prioritizing equitable distribution of social, economic, and health benefits to all members of society. This session will be moderated by NREL and will provide an overview of our partner efforts to address equitable access to cooling, and equitable mobility/transportation.

The development and evolution of technology that creates solutions for smart cities and connected communities advances fast. Government procurement processes are often not designed for fast-changing marketplaces with emerging solution providers and evolving specifications. Municipalities who wish to take advantage of the latest tech often get stuck in procurement processes designed for mature markets with legacy suppliers and detailed specifications. And if you have tried the “Jam it through procurement” approach, you know that it is at worst painfully unsuccessful and at best unsustainable. This session’s panel of experts will share how cooperative purchasing can help. Improved procurement speed, solution availability, procurement compliance, and budget compliant financing are some of the topics they will discuss.

Decarbonization has the potential to be one of the most transformative moments in recent history for cities. With automation and intelligence defining the early promise of smart cities, the new wave of carbon-free energy infrastructure brings unprecedented opportunities for quality of life and resilience. This panel will dive into managing energy resources to accommodate decarbonization, building smart infrastructure to address resilience, transforming city fleets and buildings.

This session will present two on-going projects that are being funded by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Connected Communities program that foster aging in place. The first project is titled Alerting Elders and Trusted Social Networks Living in EJ Communities About Indoor and Outdoor Risks to Their Health. This project, led by Three3, Inc., is developing a system that integrates indoor environmental sensors, smart thermostats, and tablets to provide real-time alerts about hazardous conditions in elders homes in Knoxville, Tennessee. Three3 will also also report on experiences in working with residents to install the sensors. The second project is titled Connectivity and Health in Orchard Knob: A Smart Community Model for Equitable Access to Services for the 21st Century. Enterprise Center is leading this project to improve the connectivity of approximately 1000 residents who live in the Orchard Knob community of Chattanooga, Tennessee. This project unites multifaceted and pervasive connectivity through expanded broadband access; walkable public WiFi; digital literacy training; and a digital resource hub with energy-efficient built-environment improvements and Smart Home, IoT and telehealth technologies. Enterprise Center will also report on their Tech Goes Home project, which focuses on improving elders’ digital capacities."

We are entering the third phase of the Smart City movement. Five years ago cities were still exploring and learning. More recently, pilot deployments were conducted and are beginning to scale. But we have learned that to effectively scale, cities need to think regionally. Nearly all use cases - traffic, air/water quality, stormwater to name a few - are regional. This session reviews the regional approach in Research Triangle. What has worked, what hasn't and what is still to come.

Using digital twins, you can simulate real life scenarios for thorough analysis and deployment optimization. Cities are constantly faced with the dilemma of managing siloed solutions which do not interact with each other to provide cross vertical insights. Once these silos are broken and data can be securely shared digital twins provide the perfect visualization to analyze current and predictive scenarios in urban planning. In this session, Ali Asad Hasan of AWS will explain how the AWS Smart Territory Framework helps break data silos and Raza Jafri, CEO of MetaWorldX, will present a live demonstration of a real smart city pulling in real-time LoRaWAN data from air quality and parking sensors. You will also hear from Ashwin Chandran of McCord Development about their Generation Park project and how the AWS cloud services have helped them create innovative IoT solutions.

Today's up and coming startups are leveraging cutting edge technologies to solve critical challenges for modern communities. Partnering with real-time data solutions enables local leaders to improve quality of life for residents across a vast range of areas, from environmental justice, public health, safety and security, utilities management, transportation, etc. Come hear the latest applications that are ushering in the future and making our communities more smart and connected. --

Companies around the world have been working for over a decade to develop drone technologies that will work together with ground transportation to greatly improve last-mile delivery. Today, delivery drones have already changed the experience of last mile delivery for customers on three continents. Wing’s drone delivery service in Dallas-Fort Worth was the first commercial drone delivery service in a major U.S. metropolitan area. The ultimate vision is to deliver people’s packages more efficiently and safely as part of an automated logistics system that routinely moves packages by the millions. The economics of drone delivery improve dramatically with scale, and all of the salient metrics (access, safety, and sustainability) become far more meaningful at large volumes. Drone delivery is poised to revolutionize urban landscapes and transform them into truly smart cities."

An intergenerational battle that pits Baby Boomers against Generations Z and Alpha clouds many discussions of infrastructure, especially transportation. Just as Boomers continue to hold control at the highest levels of government, they continue to battle for the continuation of street and road designs that maintain a status quo that costs our society over 40,000 lives each year. On one hand, modern city planners and engineers advocate and use new engagement processes that open the transportation design process to change and flexibility. On the other, those seeking to maintain the status quo attempt to sidetrack the engagement process by forcing the ideas of a very small minority not only on the existing majority but on future, yet-to-be-born, majorities. Unfortunately, there is a lack of consensus on when a vocal minority is so small that, while their comments must be considered, eventually they must bend to the future owners of our communities. We would like to discuss this quandary from the viewpoint of an assistant city manager, a city planner, a young generation engineer, and a traffic engineer to shed some light on the question of when enough input and comment is enough!

FIWARE is a technology and an ecosystem of companies, universities, developers & SMES born in Europe with currently more than 600 members and about 350 cities already running with FIWARE globally. This panel will introduce you to contacts that will facilitate your journey to start leveraging the experiences of the more than 350 cities using FIWARE and its vision to support the US cities and communities. Audience: Decision makers, policy makers, government officials, new companies on board

Join us on a journey toward sustainable and smart urban living. This MeetUp - promoted by FIWARE Foundation - invites together experts, individuals, innovators, and “change-makers” both from Public Administrations and business to explore and share insights in the intersection of sustainable cities. Kick off at 15:00, during the MeetUp, the High level of FIWARE Foundation team will present some promising Open Source and AI-based projects currently underway in Smart Cities around the world. MeetUp will continue engaging a dynamic conversation in small groups with discussing challenges, successes, and strategies for creating resilient and sustainable Cities. Contributing from local initiatives, organizations, and projects that are actively contributing to sustainable urban development.

Expanding on the microtransit article of last September’s Smart Cities Dive with real-world storytelling of smart mobility (microtransit with online integration) within one of the smallest cities to implement this strategy in the US - Winchester, VA. In addition to expanding transit options, Winchester is on the precipice of revolutionizing urban retail growth strategies, as well. Instead of providing financial incentives (tax abatements, tax credits, and grants) to draw retailers, microtransit could put Winchester in a position to provide something more compelling, sustainable, and long-term – a consistent customer base that replaces geographic access with efficient transit accessibility. A city-sponsored microtransit system could alter retail site evaluation. Traditional site criteria focuses on population and income within radii. Goods and services retailers struggled to find opportunities in smaller cities due to low density levels. Public sector incentives, intended to mitigate have reported limited results despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent over the past 20 years. Bringing customers to the stores, instead of the “stores to the customers” has the potential to maximize the value this public investment and to facilitate easy customer access to retail. Essentially, a win/win for everyone.

With the help of Fortune 500s and local DBEs, the Atlanta BeltLine, a 22-mile trail and transit loop that connects 45 neighborhoods in the heart of the city, has embarked on the implementation of a digital inclusion and smart corridor strategy with two pilot sites on the trail to inform the data. The program will be catalyzed by a dark fiber and conduit system the Atlanta BeltLine has deployed around its corridor in partnership with eX² Technology, one of the country’s leading experts in conduit infrastructure. It will feature the first US deployment of the Honeywell City Suite, an artificial intelligence enabled IoT platform serving over 75 cites globally, helping improve the lives of over 100 million people. Alongside local Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs), the project activates the Atlanta BeltLine as a smart corridor that addresses the technology gap and the digital divide across the city of Atlanta. Welcome and Vision Overview – Kelvin Collins, VP of Economic Development, Atlanta BeltLine, Inc.

Join Opendatasoft, the Town of Cary, and the City of Raleigh as they lead a discussion on effective open data use in building smart cities. This panel aims to delve into the practical applications and benefits of open data initiatives within the context of smart cities. The session will highlight the transformative potential of open data in fostering innovation, transparency, and citizen engagement. From autonomous vehicles, to environmental monitoring, Cary and Raleigh will showcase how open data has been instrumental in enhancing the efficiency and livability of their communities. The panelists will collectively highlight best practices, challenges, and success stories in implementing open data strategies. This discussion promises to be a platform for knowledge sharing, encouraging attendees to explore the potential of open data in shaping smarter, more sustainable cities. Join us for this insightful panel and be part of the conversation on effective open data use in building the smart cities of the future.

This moderated panel of city leaders will focus on practical and specific lessons learned, successes and failures, and the resulting best practices.

In this session, you will delve deep into the core principles and strategies that underpin the creation of equitable cities. Our panel discussion will spotlight cities and projects that have achieved remarkable success in implementing equity-focused initiatives, offering you a firsthand look at their challenges, strategies, and achievements. These real-life examples will ignite your imagination and equip you with insights to drive change in your own community. Furthermore, our panelists will unveil practical, actionable steps and best practices that cities can adopt to advance equity effectively. Gain a clear roadmap for action, armed with the knowledge of potential barriers and opportunities along the way. Don't miss this opportunity to be inspired and equipped to lead your city towards a more equitable future. Join us at Smart Cities to be part of this transformative session.

inCitu brings future cities to life via augmented reality (AR), to foster collaboration around urban change. This Fall (2023), inCitu launched two city-wide pilots, turning Washington DC and Charleston SC's permits data into multiple augmented reality (AR) experiences, available at the projects' future sites. This session will include a presentation by inCitu's Founder & CEO to showcase these two city-wide projects, followed by a discussion with our partners in Washington DC and Charleston SC, from the private and public sectors. The discussion will focus on how AR is key to build transparent, inclusive city planning processes.

The Milwaukee WaterMarks initiative engages the community to better understand how their contribution towards the management of municipal water systems can affect the performance of flood control measures in the city. The WaterMarks project centers around dynamically illuminated signage markers in neighborhoods across the city to create a conceptual Atlas of Water. Each WaterMark is an autonomous, solar powered, IoT smart pole that is wirelessly connected through the cloud to the City’s flooding alert system. The city sends an alert that remotely triggers the controls of the sign to pulse dynamically during a flooding event. This provides a physical and visual alert to the surrounding community that a heavy rain event is in effect, and for them to limit water usage until the event has subsided. Multiple WaterMarks installations are currently being rolled out across the City with more planned into the future. Each unique marker will be placed in an optimal location, visible to neighborhood residents. Each Watermarker also broadcasts a free local community WiFi with a dedicated portal for community engagement and local events. The panel will describe the project's history; the process of stakeholder engagement; and the technology of the WaterMark poles.

This panel will focus on practical and specific lessons learned, successes and failures, and the resulting best practices used over the past years by these diverse and unique cities.

The panel will focus on the City of Hyattsville’s experiences managing a new hybrid environment of collaborative digital and traditional resident engagement. We will explore the processes, policies, and procedures involved in integrating digital engagement into the decision-making process. Civil servants and public officials can learn best practices for online engagement, how projects can benefit from asynchronous and virtual engagement, and how blended participation strategies create a more inclusive, equitable government. The City of Hyattsville, Maryland is a municipality of approximately 21,000 residents. Following the move to fully virtual engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hyattsville recognized a need for more collaborative and user-friendly digital engagement tools. Even as the pandemic has subsided, community members continue to value online engagement that accommodates diverse resident needs and allows for feedback on their own time. The City has been using CitizenLab, an IAP2-informed, online resident participation tool, to enable asynchronous and accessible participation across a variety of topics. Using CitizenLab, Hyattsville has been a leader in municipal innovation. Blending traditional resident engagement theory with the latest technology in virtual participation, we will be using Hyattsville as a case study for the future of engagement.

Join a panel of experts building the next generation of utilities as they explore how these utilities make communities more sustainable while establishing a higher quality of life. From equity to geothermal energy to last-mile delivery, the future begins underground and you will get a sneak peek of the future. What you will learn:

The benefits of data integration and other smart city technologies provide great opportunities for use cases that regularly cross geographic or categorical boundaries. Some of the most opportune use cases for smart city techniques include transportation, water and energy infrastructure management, all of which routinely cross regional borders and can be better integrated. The promise of smart city practices and technologies, however, can be impeded by limitations on municipal budgets and resources. In this session, panelists representing different levels of municipal, county, and state governments will discuss the challenges and opportunities for coordinating interjurisdictional smart city activities and methods for collaborating on development, implementation, and management. Attendees will learn about:

In this panel discussion, we will explore the intersection of smart governance and citizen engagement, focusing on how technology can empower communities, foster trust, and enhance civic participation. We will delve into the innovative approaches and best practices that cities are adopting to create inclusive and participatory decision-making processes, ensuring that residents have a voice in shaping the future of their cities. Through this discussion, we aim to inspire actionable strategies and collaborative initiatives that can drive effective smart governance and meaningful citizen engagement.