Accelerator for America and Honeywell Collaborate to Promote Smart City Growth in Five U.S. Cities
ACCELERATOR FOR AMERICA AND HONEYWELL COLLABORATE TO
PROMOTE SMART CITY GROWTH IN FIVE U.S. CITIES
What is a smart city?
“A smart city eliminates silos, identifies integration opportunities and uses data to institute change,” according to Matthew Britt, Honeywell’s general manager of Smart Cities and Communities. “Honeywell’s ready now smart city solutions leverage data to help create safer, more resilient and sustainable cities and communities that improve quality of life.”
With that in mind, today, I’m excited to share with you the launch of a new Accelerator for America initiative to help our nation’s cities – the Honeywell Smart City Accelerator Program.
This partnership between Accelerator for America and Honeywell begins by helping five cities – Cleveland, OH; Kansas City, MO; Louisville, KY; San Diego, CA; and Waterloo, IA – strategically plan their futures and build capacity to fund transformational initiatives.
Identifying and creating local initiatives to grow community wealth and increase economic security is how we advance our mission to grow and create national change from the ground up, and the Honeywell Smart City Accelerator Program advances this mission.
Through the Smart City Accelerator, each city will receive technical support from Honeywell and Accelerator for America to develop a Smart City Strategic Plan. Each strategic plan will align key stakeholders, define priorities, and identify high-impact and inclusive initiatives that advance residents’ quality of life by improving climate resiliency, public safety, operational efficiency and service delivery. Each city will also receive support in applying for federal grants to support the implementation of identified projects.
The five cities were chosen through an application process that looked at their leadership visions and data strategies and reviewed each city’s strategic plan, sustainability plan, climate plan, and operating and capital budgets.
Working closely with city stakeholders, a four-track Smart City Strategic Plan for each city will be created that encompasses:
Track 1 – Smart City Vision: Identifies priorities and desired outcomes from a focused set of key stakeholders. It will include resiliency focused goals such as reducing operational costs,enhancing resident engagement, strengthening community resiliency, improving public safety and bridging the equity gap.
Track 2 – Operational Framework: Serves as a roadmap for managing and supporting smart city projects. It will help cities integrate new capabilities into current systems and processes, define associated KPIs and serve as an essential element for grant applications.
Track 3 – Project Definition: Defines high-impact projects and potential business models that can be implemented to achieve the goals defined in Track 1, including program statements, recommended solutions, high level solution requirements and expected benefits.
Track 4 – Smart City Project Plan: Identifies tasks and processes to help guide cities through project implementation as well as define overall smart cities governance structures.
We are proud to be working with old and new friends of Accelerator for America through this initiative, especially Mayors Justin Bibb (Cleveland), Greg Fischer (Louisville) Todd Gloria (San Diego), Quentin M. Hart (Waterloo), and Quinton Lucas (KC), You can read about what they had to say about the Smart City Accelerator and learn more here.
As always, thank you for sharing our journey to help strengthen America’s local communities.