Houston accelerator places new focus on resilience in the face of Covid-19

Source: Smart Cities World Published: April 7, 2020

The Ion Smart & Resilient Cities Accelerator wants to support start-ups to create solutions to help in everyday lives, but also in situations that require urgency like the coronavirus outbreak.

The Ion Smart Cities Accelerator in Houston is promoting resilience as a core pillar of smart cities and placing a new focus on this area in the face of the coronavirus outbreak. The renamed Ion Smart & Resilient Cities Accelerator will reveal its second cohort of start-ups later this month.

By adding ‘resilient’ to its name, the accelerator said it more formally emphasises its mission to enable start-ups to create and deploy solutions to help Houstonians thrive not only in their everyday lives, but also in situations that require urgency like Covid-19. It also complements the City of Houston’s Resilient Houston strategy this year.

Civic infrastructure

Launched in September 2019, the accelerator was formed to address the needs of Houston, and cities across the US, by deploying technology into existing civic infrastructure.

Supported by Microsoft and Intel, Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office and other Houston stakeholders, as well as TXRXlabs, the accelerator provides start-ups with access to customised and needs-based programming, mentoring from academic, industry and community experts and a prototyping lab.

Read more here.