Last week, city officials from around the country gathered in Los Angeles to share ideas about how government can be more data-driven, creative and effective in solving public problems. The raison d'etre for the Government Performance and Innovation Summit, an annual event hosted by Governingmagazine and its nonprofit partner Living Cities, is to showcase, spread and scale up promising programs and practices in local government.
Read MoreAutonomous cars are much in the news, mostly because of the collisions that are bound to happen as we mix human and robot drivers. These raise obvious questions — who pays when a robocar kills? — but the uproar over safety overlooks the fact that autonomous technology will take over commercial trucking long before the average person has to decide whether to ride in a robo-cab. Companies are building autonomous trucks today for the controlled environments of shipping ports and large industrial sites (which already have self-driving forklifts!).
Read MoreRight now, most self-driving cars–like those being developed by Google or Uber–can only operate in very limited urban areas of the United States. In part, that’s because these cars need extremely accurate 3D maps that are constantly updated to function properly. That makes them impossible to use on millions of miles of roads outside cities–a problem that MIT engineers at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are tackling with a new system using just basic GPS, laser sensors, and artificial intelligence to navigate rural roads. Its name is MapLite.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Platooning developer Peloton Technology will have its two-truck platooning system in day-to-day commercial operation by the end of the year, a company executive said.
As far as professions go, conservationists are not known for their optimism. And, with the future of the planet looking so bleak, who can blame them? By 2100, the world is on track for more than three degrees of warming, sliding past the targets set by the Paris climate accord in 2015. By the middle of this century, between 15 and 37 per cent of species sampled in one study could be completely gone. In 2016, it became clear that giraffe populations had declined by 40 per cent over the last 30 years, earning the animals a spot on the endangered species list.
Read MoreLocal governments are solution-driven and strive to improve residents' lives. But not all cities seek solutions in the same manner, or have the same success.
There's a race to 5G and the U.S. is not winning — China and South Korea are, according to a report conducted by research firm Analysys Mason and released today by CTIA, the wireless industry association.
Read MoreLots of smart people are talking about smart cities. There is an increasing urgency to take action, given that more than 50% of us already live in urban environments -- a statistic expected to be 66% by 2050. Recently Austin, my hometown, played host to global thought leaders at the Cities Summit during the SXSW conference. It was both informative and inspiring to listen to a cross section of civic leaders, creative urbanists and concerned citizen advocates.
Read MoreThere are 355 smart city projects in 221 cities, according to a new report from Navigant Research; almost one in five now cut across multiple industry sectors, as smart city integration gathers pace. The total value of the smart cities market will more than double in the next decade, from $40.1 billion in 2017 to 94.2 billion by the end of 2026.
Read MoreOver $14.85 billion have been spent on smart city initiatives in 2015. By 2020, the figure is expected to double and reach $34.45 billion.
Read MoreSmart city projects in China are expected to generate $320 billion for the nation's economy by 2025, according to Frost & Sullivan.
Read MoreALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces an important milestone in its Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) effort. In collaboration with an industry consortium of 28 networking companies and associations, NSF is supporting the development and deployment of the first two PAWR research platforms, based in Salt Lake City and New York City. These platforms will power research motivated by real-world challenges on experimental, next generation wireless test beds at the scale of cities and communities. The goal is to advance the state of the art for wireless technology beyond today's 4G, LTE and emerging 5G capabilities.
Read MoreIn recent years, the city of Ann Arbor, Mich., has struggled to deal with increased floodwaters reaching the city. To funnel pooling waters after intense storms safely away, the city worked with the University of Michigan to develop Open Storm, a package of open-source sensors, hardware and algorithms to measure and control storm water.
Read MoreUsing failure as a learning moment and building partnerships are among the lessons from the three-day conference in Kansas City, MO.
Read MoreDuring the Smart Cities Conference in Kansas City, Mo., earlier this week, thought leaders broke down the issues facing technology deployments and the importance of bringing constituents along for the ride.
Read MorePaying a water bill or filing a business license fee in Chicago is getting easier. The city has organized payments under one platform and launched the application on 50 new kiosks to be arranged around the city — in locations as varied as police stations to libraries — with the aim of making certain transactions with Chicago quicker and more seamless. The kiosks are expected to roll out this summer.
Read MoreIn Jasper, Ind., Mayor Terry Seitz leads a three-year initiative to bring a fiber network to all residents and businesses to his town of 15,000. He won support for the plan by explaining the opportunities the network would create as well as warning the city could be left behind in innovation and prosperity if it didn’t invest.
Read MoreIt is not an easy time to be an internationalist, to seek global solutions to global problems amid what feels like one of history’s periodic inclinations toward divisiveness.
Read MoreWhen China decides to do something, the country can be incredibly agile and quick in implementation. One example is the construction of a "Forest City" that pushes the boundaries of sustainable urban planning and development, a concept the EPA should certainly take a look at.
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