4 cities proving the transformative value of data and IT

‘Smart cities’ are on the rise, laying out technical foundations for data-driven decision-making, efficiencies, and services to the benefit of their citizens.

Smart cities are springing up around the country. These technologically modern municipalities use a variety of systems, devices, and sensors to enhance services and operations, manage assets, and increase efficiency — fueled by the power of data.

Such data, collected from a range of sources before being processed and analyzed, helps city IT organizations monitor and manage infrastructure such as traffic and transportation systems, utilities, water supply networks, waste removal, hospitals, schools, libraries, and other community services.

In many cases IT leaders and staff are at the forefront of these efforts, helping to identify the most appropriate solutions and ensure that technology is working as it should. Here four city IT leaders discuss how they are putting IT to work in intelligent ways to help make their municipalities more efficient and smarter.

Emphasizing data-driven decision-making in Aurora

In 2018, the City of Aurora, Ill., launched a comprehensive Technology Strategic Plan that includes 58 short- and long-term initiatives across four main categories: technology infrastructure; exploring the latest technology solutions; governance and cybersecurity; and IT management.

“The basic elements of a smart city are often stitched together from various stakeholders, vendors, and technologies, creating a fragmented ecosystem,” says Michael Pegues, CIO of Aurora. “Aurora acknowledges the importance of a solid foundation and is actively enhancing its physical infrastructure to effectively support smart city initiatives.”

This effort includes improvements to the fiber-optic network and upgrades to the network equipment and computing infrastructure. A smart city IT infrastructure needs to be agile and flexible to scale as initiatives grow, Pegues says.

Another focus is effective data processing and analytics. “Cities need efficient data processing and analytics capabilities to derive meaningful insights,” Pegues says. “Aurora emphasizes data-driven decision-making. Our IT Data and Analytics Division [uses] analytics tools to process data efficiently, enabling informed choices for better city management.”

One initiative under way in Aurora is ZencityEngage, a digital engagement platform that enables residents to collaborate on key initiatives by providing an accessible space to voice concerns and share ideas. Use advanced AI algorithms, the city can analyze data from social media, city hotlines, and other relevant sources to provide government stakeholders with detailed insights about how citizens view and use city resources.

Pegues and Aurora have also partnered with Esri to leverage geographic information system (GIS) technology for developing a digital twin, or a real-time virtual representation of the city, including physical objects, processes, relationships, and behaviors, integrating a wide array of digital models.

With Nicor Gas and Habitat for Humanity, the city is also building a new “smart neighborhood” development, Project Green Freedom, to reduce its carbon footprint, equip homes with highly efficient and renewable technologies, and improve the quality of life of residents through manageable mortgage payments and energy bills.

Aurora IT has also launched a Public Safety Transparency Accountability Program (TAP) that includes technologies such as body cameras, dash cameras, and drones, for the police department. These investments will help increase transparency and accountability in the community.

Aurora is also exploring use of AI for various city services and operations, Pegues says.

“Recognizing the transformative power of AI in improving efficiency, decision-making, and citizen services, the city administration is actively preparing to integrate AI technologies into various sectors,” he explains. The city hopes AI tools will help streamline administrative processes, automate routine tasks, and optimize resource allocation.

Prototyping the smart San Antonio of the future

In 2023, the City of San Antonio launched its Smarter Together initiative. The community-driven framework helps guide San Antonio’s investments in emerging technology and is centered around key themes defined via community engagement with residents.

Since its launch, Smarter Together has made a material impact on the city, says Emily Royall, smart cities administrator for San Antonio, who reports directly to CIO Craig Hopkins.

The centerpiece of the initiative is a smart cities roadmap that outlines key initiatives and covers five priority areas for the San Antonio community: access to public information; public safety; resilience and environmental quality; safe infrastructure; and access to transportation.

The city also created a “Smarter Together Testbed” that has launched seven prototype projects to date.

These include an AI-powered chatbot that provides city residents with continuous access to information about bond-related construction on a major corridor; a data-driven mobile application supporting food-desert analyses; an augmented reality platform supporting youth engagement in the parks system; and LiDAR sensing to enhance traffic data collection.

“These projects are prototypes that allow our city departments to test the capabilities of a technology and evaluate its impact to their operations, before making significant investments,” Royall says. “Should the prototype prove successful, the sponsoring department may proceed to competitively bid for the solution.”

The greatest challenges to implementation of the smart cities program “are also the characteristics of what we believe is reflective of a people-centered smart cities approach,” Royall says.

One of these is integrating residents into the process of digital transformation. The approach to meeting this challenge was to develop a smart cities framework that reflects the experiences of residents as they expressed it on their own terms, Royall says. The city engaged hundreds of residents to develop its roadmap.

Another challenge is breaking siloes within government to achieve results. To address this, the city in 2023 established a governance model called Smart Cities as a Service — which includes representatives from the city’s procurement; legal; finance; IT; diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility;

and sustainability departments — to accelerate the review and approvals of smart city projects.

“Decisions take place through an internal committee that includes representation from our shared services, as well as departments with cross-departmental policies,” Royall says. “To make smart cities work, a governance model supported by champions from across the organization is essential.”

Raleigh tackles high-impact issues with IT

The City of Raleigh, N.C., has launched multiple smart city initiatives involving several departments, says CIO Mark Wittenburg.

In one, IT worked with the transportation department to pilot computer vision at intersections, with the goal of reducing traffic fatalities to zero. The city is using deep learning computer vision models on traffic camera feeds to better understand turning movements, vehicle trajectories, and overall traffic behavior.

“These vehicle trajectories are transformed into GIS features, which are visualized in the GIS system in real-time, allowing geographical analysis in conjunction with other enterprise GIS data,” Wittenburg says. Turning movement counts are essential for traffic analysis activities, including understanding real-time congestion, traffic signal timing, traffic anomalies, and roadway design, he says.

IT partnered with software company Esri as the foundational GIS layer and with AI provider NVIDIA to develop an AI/machine learning model.

“Transportation is excited about the possibilities for this technology to enhance intersection safety,” Wittenburg says.

A second initiative is designed to help the city prepare for and respond to extreme heat. Raleigh IT is using tools from multiple vendors to collect data on urban heat islands. Community volunteers used heat sensors mounted on cars and bicycles or carried in their pockets and traveled throughout Raleigh to collect data, Wittenburg says.

This data was compiled into a map by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CAPA Strategies, a provider of analytics for sustainability, to show where heat islands exist.

“Data was collected in the early morning, mid-afternoon, and early evening to understand how temperatures shift during the day and where and when heat is felt most strongly,” Wittenburg says.

A third project relates to the stormwater infrastructure. Through a network of sensors, the stormwater department monitors and feeds information to an Emergency Operations Center for water entering Raleigh’s watershed.

“The system also monitors levels at low-water crossings, streams, rivers, and lakes that are managed by the city,” Wittenburg says. The city uses Esri GIS to display data for first responders to keep the community safe and for flood management.

And in another effort, Raleigh partnered with MITRE to use a digital twin Esri model to expand its understanding of how growth will impact the climate. Initially developed to understand the impact of urban growth on wind patterns, the model has been adapted to understand how urbanization could impact the climate, and how these changes can disproportionately impact vulnerable populations.

Making Mesa municipal operations smarter with data

The City of Mesa, Ariz., in 2018 launched the first iteration of its Smart City Master Plan, with foundational projects including the implementation of broadband connectivity, sensors, smart metering, and data infrastructure and privacy, among others.

All those projects have been completed or are in long-term scale-up implementation, says Harry Meier, deputy CIO and leader of Mesa’s smart city efforts.

“During that phase of Mesa’s smart city journey we focused on foundational enabling technology, such as finding the right vendor partner for our smart metering AMI [advanced metering infrastructure] network,” Meier says. Mesa partnered with Zylem for a citywide meter and sensor network scaling up to more than 250,000 water, gas, and electric meters.

The city has since built a data services platform and governance model that can serve public data transparency as well as drive internal, data-driven decision making at all levels of the city government, Meier says.

This has enabled the city to establish a Realtime Crime Center operated by the police department, which serves as the department’s information hub, supports public safety efforts to prevent and reduce crime, and enhances citizen and officer safety within the community.

Mesa has also created a mobile platform, MesaNow, to provide residents with news, events, personalized information, issue reporting, utility billing, and other functions all in one place.

It’s also creating multi-use video analytics and AI monitoring capabilities for things such as smart downtown parking and people counting, using cameras that are also available to the Realtime Crime Center in emergencies.

Mesa is also enacting a climate action plan with commitments from every city department to contribute. This includes enabling a smart streetlights initiative to serve the varying lighting needs of people across the city and convert more than 40,000 lights to LED with centralized monitoring and controls; creating a comprehensive building automation system that will save the city millions in electricity costs; and finding circular economy practices in food waste to convert to fuel for the garbage truck fleet.

The next wave of projects includes further building out smart sensor capabilities using the AMI network and other network capabilities already built; creating augmented reality activations with the local Visit Mesa visitors bureau and downtown real estate developers; and using data and sensor capabilities in place to create new digital twins of the city to enhance services such as water management, traffic management, and others.

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