Global City Teams Challenge

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Administration 

Building 101, 100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD Campus

Welcome to the Workshop

Packet Contents

Room Assignments and Locations........................................................................................ 2

Agenda.................................................................................................................................. 3

List of Action Cluster Presentations .................................................................................... 4

Guidance for New Participants............................................................................................. 6

Speaker Bios......................................................................................................................... 7

Global City Team Action Cluster Project Abstracts............................................................ 11

Disaster Resilience........................................................................................................ 12

Transportation.............................................................................................................. 14

General ......................................................................................................................... 16

Education...................................................................................................................... 18

Health & Public Safety.................................................................................................. 19

Energy & Utilities.......................................................................................................... 22

TECH JAM 

February 12-13, 2015
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 2

Meeting Room Locations

2.12.15 Concurrent:

Activity Room Breakout

Sessions

Working 

Sessions

All Plenary Sessions Green Auditorium 1:30 pm 2:30 pm

Energy, Transportation Portrait Room

Health & Public Safety, Disaster Resilience Heritage Room

Education, General * Lecture Room A

New Action Cluster / Team Formation Room Lecture Room B

Overflow / Networking / New Action Clusters Lecture Room C

Overflow / Networking / Existing Action Clusters Lecture Room D

Individual Group Sessions (first come-first serve) B111

Bringing IoT Know-how to High School Students B113

* General includes Recreation, Mobile Communication, Smart Neighborhoods, etc.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 3

Agenda

February 12, 2015 

7:30 am Registration

8:30 am

Opening Remarks – Green Auditorium

Welcome Richard Cavanagh, Acting Associate Director for Laboratory Programs and the Director of the 

Special Programs Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Global City Teams Challenge Overview: Sokwoo Rhee (NIST) and Glenn Ricart (US Ignite)

9:05 am

Keynotes

Dan Correa, Senior Advisor for Innovation Policy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy 

(OSTP)

Jon Bruner, O’Reilly Media, Co-Chair of Solid Conference

9:35 am Special Remarks

Ike Leggett, County Executive of Montgomery County, MD

9:40 am

Federal Program Opportunities for Smart Communities and the Internet of Things (IoT)

Perspectives offered by government officials on current and future program opportunities

 David Corman, National Science Foundation

 Walton Fehr, US Department of Transportation

10:10 am Break 

10:30 am

Action Cluster Panels – Scenarios for Global Cities - Green Auditorium

Perspectives from Global City Action Cluster Teams – current/future work, partners needed, expected 

outcomes and challenges: Disaster Resiliency, Transportation, General, Education

12:25 pm Breakout Session Process Overview – Joan Pellegrino, Energetics

12:30 pm Lunch and Networking – NIST Cafeteria (on your own)

1:30 pm

Concurrent Breakout Sessions – New Partner and Project Explorations (Room assignments: page 2)

Newcomers give 2 minute overviews on needs (cities, municipalities, states) or potential contributions 

(industry, associations, non-profits, universities, government programs) to the Global City Teams 

Challenge See page 2 for room assignments

2:30 pm

Concurrent Working Sessions – Project Discussion and Formation (Room locations: page 2)

 Existing Project Teams Discussion: Refine action plans, metrics, and demonstration plans; and 

recruit new team members

 New Project Teams Formation: Discuss possible new teams/projects and scenarios, recruit team 

members, create potential path forward, discuss public-private partnerships

4:30 pm Adjourn

5:30-7 pm Reception – hosted by Montgomery County at Thingstitute, 29 Courthouse Square, 2nd floor, Rockville, MD 

February 13, 2015

8:30 am Opening Perspectives – Green Auditorium

Chris Greer, Director of Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Grid Program Office (NIST)

8:45 am Keynote

Richard Voyles, Assistant Director of Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems ( OSTP)

9:00 am

International Efforts in Global Cities

Thibaut Kleiner, European Commission (video presentation)

Bram Reinders, Amsterdam Smart City

Noa Pereg, Head of Media, Tel Aviv

9:45 am

Action Cluster Panels – Scenarios for Global Cities

Perspectives from Global City Action Cluster Teams – existing and newly formed: Health & Public 

Safety, Energy & Utilities, Education

10:45 am Break

11:00 am Action Cluster Panels – Continue

12:45 pm Next Steps and Adjourn
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 4

Action Cluster Presentations

Thursday, February 12, 2015: 10:30am-12:30pm

Primary Sector: Disaster Resilience Presenters

Human Population Mapping for Enhanced Community 

Resilience (Annapolis Team) Tina Williams, TCecure, LLC

Smart Emergency Response System (SERS) Shengli Fu, University of North Texas

Cyber Attack-Defense Exercise for System Planners and First 

Responders (Iowa) Manimaran Govindarasu, Iowa State

Real-Time Geospatial Collaboration Platform for First 

Responders Chris Philips, TouchShare

Using Dynamic Virtualization and Intelligent Edge Devices in 

Disaster Response Jeff Christensen, Entry Point

Integrating an Aerial Base Station with a City’s Emergency 

Communication Grid Kamesh Namuduri, University of North Texas

Primary Sector: Transportation Presenters

Smart Mobile Operation: the OSU Transportation Hub 

(SMOOTH): Columbus, OH Paul Carlson, City of Columbus, OH

Connected, Intelligent Transit (Portland) Adrian Pearmine, IBI Group

ARIBO: Applied Robotics for Installations and Base Operations Corey Clothier, Comet Consulting

Greenville A-Taxi Shuttle Project Fred Payne, County of Greenville, SC

Primary Sector: General Presenters

Lower Manhattan’s Smart Neighborhood Pilot Sander Dolder, NYCEDC

PlanIT Impact (Kansas City) Kari Keefe, Mozilla Foundation

Kumbh Mela: Solving the Problems of Millions (Camera Culture 

Group At MIT and Nashik) John Werner, MIT Media Lab

Mobile-first Communication and Service On Demand 

Infrastructure for Hospitality - ALICE (NY) Sam Evers, ALICE

ParaDrop Suman Banerjee, University of Wisconsin-Madison

NYCLink Steve Crout, Qualcomm Government Affairs

Primary Sector: Education Presenters

Bringing Internet of Things Know-How to High School Students Greg Toth, Internet of Things Dev Labs

SENAS: Smart City Educational Network for Autistic Students J. Cecil, Oklahoma State University
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 5

Action Cluster Presentations (continued)

Friday, February 13, 2015: 9:45-10:45am

Primary Sector: Health & Public Safety Presenters

Remotely Caring for Our Most Vulnerable Citizens In-Place 

During A Pandemic

Julian Goldman, Mass General Hospital and Harvard 

Medical School

PA 2040 (DC)

Mamta Sodikumar, OCTO

Ted Jutras, Golden Triangle BID

Ken Walton, NCPC

SCALE: Safe Community Alert Network Dan Hoffman, Montgomery County, MD

Smarter Sockets: Indoor Emergency Response Locators Emmanuel Azih, Smarter Sockets

Ecosystem for Smart Medical Simulation Team Training

Brenda Bannan, George Mason University

P. Shane Gallagher, Learning Analytics Research Corp 

Shelly Blake-Plock, Yet Analytics, Inc.

Energy Efficient Data Collection Street Light Post Assembly Bridget LaFemina, Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Co

Managing Urban Air Quality (Chicago) Katie Olson, UI Labs

Chattanooga GASP: Geolocated Allergen Sensing Platform David Lary, University of Texas, Dallas

Friday, February 13, 2015: 11:00am-12:30pm

Primary Sector: Energy & Utilities Presenters

Project X: GigaBit SMART City Project (Highland, IL) William Hadala, iWire365

SmartCities Utility Infrastructure Ed Davalos, AT&T

Intelligent Connectivity & Water Resource Management Steve Crout, Qualcomm Government Affairs

Project Healthy Smart City Subrahmanian Eswaran, Carnegie Mellon University

5D Smart San Francisco 2030 District Michael Jansen, Cityzenith

Energy Storage based Adaptive Demand Response in Smart 

Commercial Buildings (NYSERDA) Christoph Meinrenken, Columbia University

Distributed Mobile Storage for Resilience – Plugin Electric 

Vehicles (PEVs) Patrick Murphy, Reluminati

Primary Sector: Education Presenter

Resource Network for Early Childhood Care and Education Michael Dunaway, The Aethena Group
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 6

Guidance for New Participants

Breakout Session Objectives and Description – New Scenarios for Global Cities 

At the Tech Jam, we anticipate there will be many newcomers to the Global Cities Team Challenge – from cities, states, 

and countries as well as companies, universities, and other organizations. The breakout sessions are designed to give 

newcomers an opportunity to describe 1) their city/country challenge or 2) the systems and capabilities they bring to the 

table as partners. Many action clusters are still forming – and many others still need partners in key capability areas.

During the breakout sessions, newcomers will be asked to provide a 5-minute description of their organization. This will 

give existing action cluster participants a chance to hear about new partner capabilities and contributions, as well as 

some of the problems and challenges facing other communities. Following the breakout session, newcomers will have 

time to network with existing partners and/or form entirely new action clusters with incoming community partners. 

Specific information we would like to hear from those new to the Global Cities Challenge are noted below. A facilitator 

will guide you through these questions and capture the information on a board at the front of the room – where all 

participants can then view it. Newcomers: If you want to create or join new action clusters - please take advantage of 

this opportunity and come prepared with short answers to the bullets below.

 Community representatives: – Identify your needs for smart global city systems that will improve quality of 

life, transport, energy, health, safety, resilience to disasters, etc.

 Community and Organization (Affiliation)

 Objective you want to achieve, e.g., problem you are solving or situation you are improving; e.g., 

what’s your ideal city system (Objective/Problem)

 Anticipated benefit to the community (societal, economic, environmental, energy, health and safety, 

other) (Impacts/Benefits)

 Partners you would like to connect with (Partners/Gaps)

 System/Company representatives: – Identify the smart systems and capabilities that you bring to the table 

to support Global Cities.

 Organization (Affiliation)

 Functionality of your systems; what you bring to the table for a global smart city (Functionality)

 Brief description of your proposed systems/scenario for smart city interconnections 

(Domain(s)/Scenario)

 Anticipated benefit to the community (societal, economic, environmental, energy, health and safety, 

other) (Impacts)

 Partners/communities you would like connect with (Partners/Gaps)

 Focus question for Association/Non-Profit/Government representatives: – Identify the programs or 

activities that your organization brings to the table to contribute to (or that may be relevant to) Global 

Cities.

 Organization (Affiliation)

 Title of activity/program (Title)

 Areas/sectors that your activity impacts the most (Domain(s))

 2-3 key functional or programmatic elements that could contribute to global cities

 Anticipated benefits of participation (Impacts)

 Partners/communities you would like to connect with (Partners/Communities)
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 7

Speaker Bios

Glenn Ricart

Founder and CTO

US Ignite

Glenn Ricart brings forty years of innovation in computer networking and related fields to 

US Ignite. Glenn is an Internet pioneer who implemented the first Inter-net 

interconnection point (the FIX in College Park, Maryland) and was recognized for this 

achievement by being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in August 2013. In one of 

his previous roles where he was academic CIO at the University of Maryland, his campus 

implemented the first institution-wide TCP/IP (Internet) network in 1983 using low-cost 

PDP-11 routers (“Fuzballs”) with software devised at the University of Maryland. Glenn 

was principal investigator of SURAnet, the first regional TCP/IP (Internet) network of 

academic and commercial institutions.

Dr. Ricart has also held other senior management positions including Executive Vice 

President and CTO for Novell in the 1990s, Managing Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers, 

and CEO and President of National LambdaRail. Dr. Ricart is also the founder or cofounder of five startups; the one previous to US Ignite, CenterBeam, was sold to Earthlink 

in 2013 after 14 years of independent operation.

Glenn’s formal education includes degrees from Case Institute of Technology and Case 

Western Reserve University, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science is from the University of 

Maryland, College Park. His inventions have resulted in more than a dozen patents. Dr. 

Ricart has served on the boards of three public companies, CACI, the SCO Organization, 

and First USA Financial Services, in addition to numerous non-profits.

Dan Correa

Senior Advisor for Innovation Policy

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Dan Correa is Senior Advisor for Innovation Policy at the White House Office of Science 

and Technology Policy. Previously, he was an analyst at the Information Technology and 

Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think tank, where he authored reports on 

innovation, entrepreneurship, and broadband policy, which have been cited in 

publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Correa 

has also consulted for the Connecticut Technology Council on state entrepreneurship 

policies and technology-based economic development. He is a veteran of several political 

campaigns, most recently President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, where he was 

Florida Deputy Get Out the Vote Director. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, holds an 

M.A. in Economics from Yale University, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. At Yale Law 

School he has served as a Kauffman Fellow in Law, Economics and Entrepreneurship.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 8

Jon Bruner

Co-Chair of O'Reilly Solid and Editor-at-Large at O'Reilly Media

Jon Bruner is a data journalist who approaches questions that interest him by writing and 

coding. He is co-chair of the O'Reilly Solid conference, focused on the intersection 

between software and the physical world, and he oversees O'Reilly's publications on 

hardware, the Internet of Things, manufacturing, and electronics. Before coming to 

O'Reilly, he was data editor at Forbes Magazine. He lives in San Francisco, where he can 

occasionally be found at the console of a pipe organ.

Isiah Leggett

County Executive, Montgomery County, MD

In November 2006, Isiah Leggett was elected to a four-year term as Montgomery County 

Executive. He is the first African American to be elected to this public office. In November 

2010 he was reelected by County voters with over 65% of the ballots cast. He was elected 

to a third term in 2014. Isiah Leggett was the first African American to be elected to the 

County Council. Ike Leggett served four terms as an At-Large Member (1986 – 2002). He 

also served as the Council's President three times (1991, 1998, 1999) and as its VicePresident three times (1990, 1997 and 2002). As a Council Member he also chaired the 

Council’s Transportation and Environment Committee and served on the Education 

Committee. He holds four higher education degrees: Bachelor of Arts from Southern 

University, a Master of Arts degree and a Juris Doctorate degree from Howard University, 

and a Master of Laws from George Washington University. In earlier leadership 

experience he served as an infantry Captain in the United States Army. His tour of duty in 

the Vietnam War earned him the Bronze Star Medal, the Vietnam Service, and Vietnam 

Campaign Medals.

David Corman

Cyber Physical Systems Program Director

National Science Foundation

David Corman is lead Program Director for the Cyber Physical Systems program at the 

National Science Foundation. Dr. Corman has a broad range of research interests spanning 

many technologies fundamental to CPS application areas including transportation, energy, 

medical devices, and manufacturing. Dr. Corman has extensive industrial experience in 

the development, design, and manufacture of CPS systems including manned and 

unmanned systems. Dr. Corman received PhD degree in electrical engineering from the 

University of Maryland.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 9

Walton Fehr

Manager, Systems Engineering

Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office

US Department of Transportation

Walton Fehr has been the Manager of Systems Engineering for the US Department of 

Transportation’s Intelligent Transportation System Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) since 

May 2009. The ITS JPO oversees a large part of the Department’s connected intelligent 

transportation systems activities. At the ITS JPO, Mr. Fehr leads the research into a 

complete connected intelligent transportation system architecture which will support 

applications for safety, mobility, and sustainability for all modes including passenger 

vehicles, transit, and heavy trucks.

Mr. Fehr is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned master’s degrees in 

electrical engineering and in business administration, as well as a bachelor’s degree in 

electrical engineering. He is a licensed Professional Engineer, a certified Project 

Management Professional, named inventor on 22 US patents, and author of many papers.

Richard Voyles

University Scholar Professor and Associate Dean for Research, College of Technology, 

Purdue University, and founding director, Purdue Robotics Accelerator

Assistant Director of Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems Office, White House Office of 

Science and Technology Policy 

Dr. Voyles has been a researcher, deployer, and advocate for robotics and cyber-physical 

systems most of his academic and professional life. His service in OSTP is concurrent with 

his Purdue University position. In this role, he has been instrumental in the expansion of 

the DARPA Robotics Challenge as an international cooperation, advocated for increased 

funding for robotics and CPS research, and pushed for “filling the gaps” in the educational 

continuum “from HS to MS,” including Engineering Technology. Prior to this appointment, 

he was lead Program Director at the National Science Foundation running the National 

Robotics Initiative and was one of the founding PDs of the Innovation Corps program.

Dr. Voyles’ formal training includes the pillars of robotics – electrical, mechanical and 

computer engineering -- having received the B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue 

University in 1983, the M.S. in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from the Department 

of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 1989, and the Ph.D. in Robotics from 

the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. He has held 

tenured professor positions in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota and 

Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Denver as well as Site Director of 

the NSF Safety, Security, and Rescue Research Center, an NSF Industry/University 

Cooperative Research Center. Dr. Voyles’ research interests are in the areas of robotics 

and artificial intelligence with particular focus on the development of small, resourceconstrained robots and robot teams for urban search and rescue and surveillance as well 

as new generations of materials and co-robots for intelligent, human-assistive tasks. Dr. 

Voyles has additional expertise in sensors and sensor calibration, particularly haptic and 

force sensors, and real-time control. Dr. Voyles’ industrial experience includes Dart 

Controls, IBM Corp., Integrated Systems, Inc., Avanti Optics and Mark V Automation Corp. 

He has also served on the boards of various start-ups and non-profit groups.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 10

Bram Reinders

Director Alliance Management at Alliander NV

Founder of the European Network for Cyber Security

Chairman/Member of several European Commission Smart Grid Expert Groups

Bram Reinders studied Computer Science and holds an Executive MBA from Purdue 

University (US). His professional career focuses on developing and implementing emerging 

technologies in the US and Europe.

Bram’s current role for Alliander is to establish relevant Smart Grid and Smart City 

partnerships for the Netherlands by aligning with European technology providers, 

government, regulators, universities, consumer organizations and the European 

Commission.

Bram is also founder of the European Network of Cyber Security ENCS, was Chairman of 

several Expert Groups of the European Commission and Co-author of several European 

Commission reports.

Noa Pereg

Head of Media

City of Tel Aviv

Noa Pereg is the City of Tel Aviv's Head of Media, where she manages the city's 

advertising, press, marketing and new media departments. Ms. Pereg is deeply involved 

in Tel Aviv's smart city efforts and in cultivating the city's innovation ecosystem.

Noa previously served as Media Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Benjamin 

Netanyahu, where she implemented the National Information Directorate's media policy. 

Noa lives in Tel Aviv with her husband and their daughter. She holds an MA in Political 

Communication and a BA in Communications & Journalism and in Political Science from 

the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 11

Global City Team Action Cluster Project Abstracts

One-page slides of the action clusters are available at http://bit.ly/ActionCluster

Disaster Resilience........................................................................................................................................12

Human Geography Mapping for Enhanced Community Resilience (Annapolis, MD).......................................................12

Smart Emergency Response System (SERS) ......................................................................................................................12

CyDECS: Cyber Defense Exercise for Critical Infrastructure Security (Iowa).....................................................................12

Real-Time Geospatial Collaboration Platform for First Responders.................................................................................13

Using Dynamic Virtualization and Intelligent Edge Devices in Disaster Response............................................................13

Integrating an Aerial Base Station with a City’s Emergency Communication Grid (Denton, TX)......................................14

Transportation..............................................................................................................................................14

SMOOT Smart Mobile Operation: OSU Transportation Hub (Columbus, OH)...............................................................14

Intelligent Transit Corridor Test Bed: Reduce Congestion (Portland, OR) ........................................................................14

Intelligent Transit Corridor Test Bed: Improve Air Quality (Portland, OR)........................................................................15

Intelligent Transit Corridor Test Bed: Improve Health (Portland, OR)..............................................................................15

ARIBO: Applied Robotics for Installations and Base Operations.......................................................................................15

Greenville aTaxi: Driverless Vehicles Connecting People and Places (Greenville, SC)......................................................16

General.........................................................................................................................................................16

Lower Manhattan’s Smart Neighborhood Pilot (New York City) ......................................................................................16

PlanIT Impact (Kansas City) ...............................................................................................................................................16

Mobile-first Communication and Service On Demand Infrastructure for Hospitality - ALICE (NY) ..................................17

ParaDrop: City-scale Analytics (Madison, WI)...................................................................................................................17

NYCLink..............................................................................................................................................................................17

Education......................................................................................................................................................18

Bringing Internet of Things Know-How to High School Students......................................................................................18

SENAS: A Smart City Educational Network for Autistic Students......................................................................................18

Resource Network for Early Childhood Care and Education (Baltimore, MD)..................................................................18

Health & Public Safety ..................................................................................................................................19

PA 2040 (Washington, DC) ................................................................................................................................................19

SCALE - Healthy Air, Healthy Water, Healthy People (Montgomery County, MD) ...........................................................19

Smarter Sockets: Indoor Emergency Response Locators..................................................................................................20

Ecosystem for Smart Medical Simulation Team Training (Fairfax, VA).............................................................................20

Energy Efficient Data Collection Street Light Post Assembly (North Branford, CT) ..........................................................21

Array of Things: Managing Urban Air Quality (Chicago, IL)...............................................................................................21

Chattanooga GASP: Geolocated Allergen Sensing Platform .............................................................................................21

Energy & Utilities..........................................................................................................................................22

Project X: GigaBit SMART City Project (Highland, IL) ........................................................................................................22

SmartCity Utilities Infrastructure ......................................................................................................................................22

Intelligent Connectivity & Smart Water Assets Management (Cincinnati, OH)................................................................22

5D Smart San Francisco 2030 District (San Francisco, CA)................................................................................................23

Energy Storage based Adaptive Demand Response in Smart Commercial Buildings (NYSERDA).....................................23

Distributed Mobile Storage for Resilience – Plugin Electric Vehicles (PEVs) ....................................................................24
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 12

Disaster Resilience

Human Geography Mapping for Enhanced Community Resilience (Annapolis, MD)

This project will develop and pilot a GIS-based “ uman Geography Mapping System” functioning within a Virtual 

Business Emergency Operations Center (VBEOC) to coordinate private sector communications, manage resources, and 

enhance collaboration across the community.

In a disaster or civil emergency, planning, response, and recovery requires sharing of information among emergency 

managers, first responders, government agencies, private sector businesses, and the civil population. However, 

emergency management local leaders lack situational awareness of the lines of communication and network of 

relationships that characterize the “human geography” within their jurisdictions.

The Human Geography Mapping project will demonstrate a social networking and analysis tool to map and visually 

display the “human geography” of the community—its population, vulnerabilities, assets, and resources—and provide 

that information to the visual display of terrain, built environment, and critical infrastructure systems commonly 

available through GIS mapping tools in Emergency Operations Centers. The Architecture Document will be based on 

open standards, and the results of a high level security and privacy assessment of human data sources will be 

incorporated. The platform can be extended to share data from IoT systems that provide baseline and dynamic 

information essential to planning, preparedness and recovery.

The ability to map the human geography of the community will enhance coordination between private and public 

sectors for disaster planning, and permit the integration of human capital into the resources and infrastructures that 

comprise a resilient community. In addition, the VBEOC will provide enhanced situational awareness for First 

Responders, emergency managers, and local government officials to improve regional disaster planning.

Smart Emergency Response System (SERS)

The Smart Emergency Response System (SERS) uses cyber-physical technologies to improve the efficiency of emergency 

response when disaster strikes. Continuing from the success of the SERS project developed through SmartAmerica 

Challenge, SERS for GCTC aims to mature the on-demand drone-carried broadband long-distance communication 

infrastructure, integrate it with existing emergency management systems to support the missions of first responders, 

rescue robots, mission command and control centers, and test the system’s performance for the immediate smart city 

application on emergency response. The flexible, cost-effective, and drone-carried on-demand communication 

infrastructure extends wireless coverage, is critical for emergency scenarios where cell-towers are down, and is also 

needed at public events to temporally meet the surge of communication demands. It permits first responders to collect 

emergency information and communicate with mission centers in real-time to guide their actions. Rescue robotics and 

drones enhance the reachability and functionality of first responders. The optimal resource planning system improves 

human decision-making at mission centers. SERS is deployed and evaluated at multiple emergency exercises to prove its 

functionality through close collaboration with the Emergency Preparedness Department of the North Central Texas 

Council of Government (responsible of emergency preparedness of 16 counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth area). SERS 

transforms the provision of emergency communication, reduces emergency response time and cost, and save lives. It 

creates new job opportunities, inspires new businesses, improves economy growth, and has impacts in multiple 

domains, including public safety, air transportations, and education. SERS is a collaborative project among academic 

institutions (University of North Texas, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Wright State University), industry partners 

(Mathworks, HumanoidWay, and Myth Innovations), and government agencies (Emergency Preparedness Department 

of the North Central Texas Council of Governments).

CyDECS: Cyber Defense Exercise for Critical Infrastructure Security (Iowa)

Critical infrastructures, such as, power grid, water distribution and transportation networks, are complex cyber-enabled 

physical systems. Protecting such interconnected infrastructure against cyber attacks is of paramount importance to 
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 13

national security and economic well-being. The goal of this project to leverage three existing testbed facilities to develop 

and deploy a suite of tools to provide an integrated environment to conduct security planning, risk assessment, attackdefense training and education for the community, government and industry stakeholders. We believe our integrated 

platform with associated tools will enable cyber security assessments and training well beyond the current state of art 

table-top exercise conducted by NERC (GridEx) and DHS for power grid and critical infrastructures, respectively. 

The project partners include Iowa State University and the Information Science Institute, University of Southern 

California, and will will synergistically leverage three facilities: ISU PowerCyber (http://powercyber.ece.iastate.edu), ISU 

ISEAGE-based Cyber Defense Competition (https://cdc.iseage.org/), and USC/ISI DETER Testbed (www.isi.deterlab.net)

Use-case Scenarios:

1. “Cyber Security Planning and Risk Assessment Exercise” for CPS-based Critical Infrastructure Systems – e.g., power 

grid, Internet, water distribution and/or transportation network – engaging a couple of state government and industry 

stakeholders and deploying them at their sites.

2. “Cyber Security Attack-Defense Training Exercise” for a couple of state government and industry stakeholders and 

deploying them at their sites. Realistic attack-defense experiments with “dynamic” and “realistic” attacks and defenses 

on infrastructure elements in the testbed as opposed to performing them in a passive table-top fashion, which is very 

restrictive in its functionalities/capabilities.

Real-Time Geospatial Collaboration Platform for First Responders

This project sets out to demonstrate how real-time collaboration using a cloud-hosted analytical GIS tool has been used 

to improve situational awareness for US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and public safety teams in Los 

Angeles, CA and Ammon, ID. The sensor/source data are web services and network links, requiring minimal local 

storage, broadening the types of devices (Win, iOS, Android, desktops, tablets) that can be used for data collection and 

dissemination. The project explores how to better leverage first responders that serve as invaluable in-field sensors. The 

ability to collaboratively filter and explore data with disparate subject matter experts greatly improves analysis and

discovery of patterns and anomalies. This project will demonstrate how on-the-fly analysis of Automated Vehicle 

Location systems and IP cameras from CalTrans can be filtered to focus the attention of co-located response teams to a 

specific area of interest. Combined with current traffic conditions from the World Traffic Service, this conflated view 

offers a more comprehensive understanding of a situation. Specific filters (e.g. lenses) may be stacked and assigned 

different metadata tags to employ colorization schemes to cue the attention of responders and enable change detection 

among dispersed stakeholders. This project will also further examine client-to-client latency experiments conducted by 

USSOCOM as a quantifiable metric for effective collaboration.

Using Dynamic Virtualization and Intelligent Edge Devices in Disaster Response

The objectives of the project are to demonstrate how virtualization technologies and intelligent edge devices (sensors, 

cameras, 2-way communication) can work together to help emergency responders and City managers more reliably 

anticipate and respond to human needs in a simulated regional disaster. This will be done by demonstrating how the 

combination of these technologies enable situational awareness in real time, provide 2-way communications to a 

premise to distribute operational plans (evacuation orders or shelter locations) in real time, accelerate damage 

assessment of city infrastructure and buildings within municipal borders, and reduce loss of life by improving medical 

response times to the most critical needs.

The simulation seeks to demonstrate how dynamic network virtualization combined with the use of sensors, cameras, 

and other edge devices can provide a number of community benefits in a disaster event. This simulation will include: 1) a 

real time damage assessment of city utilities and infrastructure that are operational following a disaster event via 

sensors and cameras; 2) A demonstration of the ways an in-premise device can facilitate 2-way communications for 

assessment of health needs at a residence, a school, and a healthcare facility; 3) a demonstration of the ways an in-
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 14

premise device can facilitate 2-way communications to enable situational awareness and communicate evacuation 

orders, available resources, and accelerate damage assessment of private residences and businesses.

Integrating an Aerial Base Station with a City’s Emergency Communication Grid (Denton, TX)

The project proposes to design an Aerial Base Station that can be integrated with existing warnings and communications 

network used by the City of Denton’s emergency response agencies. It will enable citizen to citizen communication and 

citizen to first responder communication when there are power failures and cell towers are dysfunctional during disaster 

response. Phase-I will implement a WiFi-based communication service that can be used by citizens (disaster victims) to 

communicate outside of the cellphone network. Laboratory design and testing of the aerial communication platform is 

set to begin, with on-campus testing of the aerial base station and face-to-face interviews with first responder agencies 

and data analysis continuing into April 2015. In June, the platform will be tested during a disaster drill scenario.

Transportation

SMOOTH: Smart Mobile Operation: OSU Transportation Hub (Columbus, OH) 

In a Smart City, all individuals should have access to multiple choices of transportation. In the U.S., the first mile (access 

to transportation choice) and the last mile (from transportation station to final destination) can be the weakest links in 

smart mobility. Many people in the US do not live or work close to a transportation stop, and transportation stops are 

not always close to the final point of interest. While walking may be a solution for some, it does not apply to everybody 

(elderly, limited mobility, etc.). Note for instance that the elderly are expected to become 20% of the entire US 

population within the next 25 years. The proposed solution is a network of “on demand automated vehicles,” 

demonstrated using a closed circuit of automated shuttle driving within the Ohio State University main campus and two 

selected stops within the outer campus. The automated shuttles will have Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication 

modems and will be equipped with vulnerable road user detection technology, enabling them to function in pedestrian 

zones of campus. The Ohio State University is a very large campus with multiple local bus lines, bus stops, roads and 

pedestrian walkways. Although the first phase of the project will be on Campus, the City of Columbus will benefit as the 

proposed GCTC project moves to pilot studies in Columbus in later phases. MORPC develops the Columbus area 

metropolitan transportation plan, and will consider integration of SMOOTH project use cases into the transportation 

plans of Columbus and Mid-Ohio. The Center for Automotive Research at The Ohio State University; CISCO; City of 

Columbus; General Electric (GE); Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC); Battelle, and Team ARIBO are 

participating. 

Intelligent Transit Corridor Test Bed: Reduce Congestion (Portland, OR)

This project focuses on developing a sensor-connected “smart” corridor in Portland where real-time transit data is used 

to improve traffic signalization and reduce congestion. Bus/rapid transit vehicle data will be available to policymakers 

and the public via a data portal with visualization and analytics to improve transportation decision-making. The research 

will focus on the impact of traffic signal systems and bus/rapid transit data on congestion. We are interested in how we 

can create better transportation policy using modeling and analytics to achieve faster and more efficient transportation 

outcomes. We will also look at what can be done with lower cost sensors to measure vehicle location data. The test-bed 

will focus on congestion points caused by multiple, converging forms of transit in a discrete, wired corridor of Portland 

“known as the Powell Boulevard corridor.” The Powell Boulevard corridor includes a major intra-city highway, the 

Clinton St. bikeway and the Division St. development. More generally, the connected test-bed research and analysis will 

demonstrate the application of big data to complex urban problems and the benefits of applying big data to urban 

planning and sustainability. Partners in the project include Intel, Portland State University, the City of Portland, the 

Technology Association of Oregon, the IBI Group, NetCity and others.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 15

Intelligent Transit Corridor Test Bed: Improve Air Quality (Portland, OR)

This project focuses on developing a sensor-connected “smart” corridor in Portland where transit data, traffic 

signalization, and air quality sensing are made available in a data portal with visualization and analytics to reduce air 

pollution. The research will focus on identifying the effects of traffic signal systems and bus/rapid transit on 

neighborhood air quality. How does the traffic signal system impact air quality? How do particulates disperse into 

neighborhoods? We will also look at what can be done with lower cost sensors to measure air quality, and ways we can 

use modeling and analytics to help local government make good transportation policy choices. The test-bed will focus 

on air quality impacts of transit and transportation decision-making in a discrete, wired corridor of Portland “known as 

the Powell Boulevard corridor.” The Powell Boulevard corridor includes a major intra-city highway, the Clinton St. 

bikeway and the Division St. development. More generally, the connected test-bed research and analysis will 

demonstrate the application of big data to complex urban problems and the benefits of applying big data to urban 

planning and sustainability. Partners in the project include Intel, Portland State University, the City of Portland, the 

Technology Association of Oregon, the IBI Group, NetCity and others.

Intelligent Transit Corridor Test Bed: Improve Health (Portland, OR)

This project focuses on developing a sensor-connected “smart” corridor in Portland where transit data, traffic 

signalization, and air quality sensing are made available in a data portal with data visualization and analytics to improve 

respiratory health. The research will focus on exposure to air pollution, including particulates. What effects do traffic 

signal systems and bus/rapid transit have on neighborhood respiratory health? We are interested in how we can create 

better transportation policy to achieve better health outcomes through better air quality. We will also look at what can 

be done with lower cost sensors, modelling and analytics to measure health impacts of pollution generated by vehicles 

in the transit corridor. The test-bed will focus on impacts to respiratory health of transit and transportation decisionmaking in a discrete, wired corridor of Portland “known as the Powell Blvd. corridor.” The Powell Blvd corridor includes 

a major intra-city highway, the Clinton St. bikeway and the Division St. development. More generally, the connected 

test-bed research and analysis will demonstrate the application of big data to complex urban problems and the benefits 

of applying big data to urban planning and sustainability. Partners in the project include Intel, Portland State University, 

the City of Portland, the Technology Association of Oregon, the IBI Group, NetCity and others.

ARIBO: Applied Robotics for Installations and Base Operations

ARIBO, initiated by the US Army, is a series of automated vehicle pilots (or CPS pilots) using federal installations and 

universities as test-beds. Each ARIBO automated vehicle systems pilot is built around a business case for the user and 

the developer(s). Our transportation and logistics systems will be very different in twenty years and ARIBO will enable 

that transition by defining guidelines for deployment and building trust and confidence in the systems. Performance will 

be measured in each pilot. ARIBO has grown due to the Smart America Challenge from 3 sites to 9. The ARIBO pilots in 

2015 will be:

1. Stanford SLAC campus

2. West Point Military Academy

3. Fort Bragg Warrior Transition Battalion

4. Tampa Museum of Science and Industry, University of South Florida and City of Temple Terrace

5. Seattle, WA

6. Greenville, SC

7. The Ohio State University and City of Columbus, OH

8. Greenwich England

9. Lausanne Switzerland at EPFL University

● And we’re working on more sites in WA, FL, MO, GA and MI!!
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 16

ARIBO leverages a whole-of-government approach engaging multiple federal agencies as well as small tech-companies 

and universities...to leverage their expertise and resources for mutual goals. Our small commercial pilots are providing 

the critical data needed to accelerate commercialization and policy. Our technical, safety and reliability data is extremely 

valuable, but our end-user data is the key. These are the future customers and their feedback will drive adoption and 

market development.

Greenville aTaxi: Driverless Vehicles Connecting People and Places (Greenville, SC)

There is potential for a ride on The eritage Green in Greenville, SC can bring more ‘green’ to our local economy. 

Greenville’s autonomous taxi, or aTaxi, shuttle enhances the mobility and connectivity for children, disabled, and 

seniors, citizens and visitors in a functional, fun and educational way. The Heritage Green is a wonderful place to 

demonstrate the potential for autonomous vehicles to ridership.

How it works: A family parks in an adjacent parking lot and boards the nearby aTaxi. After selecting their destination, the 

low-speed EV (Electric Vehicle) takes them to the location. The experience displays 21st century mobility potential.The 

aTaxi shuttle has the potential to improve the overall experience at the Heritage Green campus in a green, zero-emission 

way. As the Heritage Green aTaxi becomes more popular, it establishes Greenville County as a center for automated 

transport network systems bringing in related industries and further economic development. The Strategic Software 

Engineering research Group will investigate systems engineering research techniques for integrating aTaxi vehicles into a 

Greenville community and optimization. Lessons learned in executing and analyzing aTaxi service will be applied in 

transportation-challenged communities like the underserved community of Nicholtown. With the aTaxi homes will be 

connected with stores, schools, and medical care. Census data shows that 1/3 of the 2010 area workforce have no car 

and need transportation to work, shopping, and entertainment/recreation. This transportation innovation will improve 

the quality of life and enhance the effectiveness of existing public transportation networks.

General

Lower Manhattan’s Smart Neighborhood Pilot (New York City)

The NYC Smart Neighborhood pilot would provide real-time data, through a sensor network, for city planners, 

businesses, academia, and entrepreneurs to better understand how the city, its infrastructure, and its population, are 

changing over time from a resources, population, and infrastructure perspective. This project aims to impact and 

strengthen those who live and/or work in lower Manhattan by providing real-time insight into urban challenges such as 

air quality and/or noise pollution, making sensor data publicly available, supporting entrepreneurs and innovation, and 

helping address some of the City's administration goals. This pilot neighborhood is representative of a business district 

neighborhood, and can be combined along with other NYC smart neighborhood projects (such as Hudson Yards and Red 

Hook) to give a more holistic systems view of how NYC functions with the long-term plan to map out the entire city of 

New York. Lastly, these pilot projects will play a critical role in helping shape the forthcoming New York City Smart Cities 

strategic plan that will set the vision for NYC’s transformation and role in the Smart Cities revolution.

PlanIT Impact (Kansas City)

What: PlanIT Impact is a resource impact tool for the planning, design and construction industries that link locally 

available geospatial data with a specific development project’s location to provide visually immersive feedback.

By calculating critical impact factors such as quality of life, energy usage, building mix, greenhouse gas and much more, 

PlanIT Impact allows you to make critical decisions sooner in the planning and design process. Information is brought to 

life using cross-referenced 3D modeling technology, GIS mapping and resource databases.

Why: As a first of its kind platform, the PlanIT Impact web app will potentially change the way building industry 

professionals make decisions and municipal leaders about where and how to invest in our communities. PlanIT Impact is 

also a powerful educational tool for students learning about the environment or as a research tool on how cities 
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 17

metabolize resources. The design and development process allows for the input of more intensive information earlier 

on so smarter decisions can be made before significant investment has occurred.

Mobile-first Communication and Service On Demand Infrastructure for Hospitality - ALICE (NY)

ALICE is partnering with the Gansevoort Hotel Group in New York City to systemize, automate, and unify their staff and 

guest operations across 2 properties located in different neighborhoods of New York City over a mile apart. The 

objective is to understand, manage and improve the day to day operations of both hotels, across all departments, 

through the creation of real time mobile communication technology. The platform will provide a cloud-based task 

management system available for staff to manage their workflow. Tasks can be requested by guests from their own 

devices or by staff internally and will then be routed to the appropriate department automatically. The platform will 

then track and assist the workflow of that task through completion. This system will provide transparency, automation, 

and rules based alerting to ensure timely task completion. ALICE will also provide a front-end interface and 2-way 

communication capability for the hotel guests to engage with relevant staff in the hotel to resolve issues. Staff will also 

be able to interact with each other through a Staff application. The objective is to make task coordination centralized 

and streamlined. Automating what have traditionally been manual processes involving pen, paper, and 2-way radios will 

increase efficiency, reduce the number of unhandled incidents to 0, allow for the measurement and optimization of all 

hotel processes, and create a truly unique and personalized experience for all parties.

ParaDrop: City-scale Analytics (Madison, WI)

Specialized ParaDrop Access Points (APs) will be deployed to local businesses around State Street, a popular pedestrian 

zone in Madison, WI. These APs will provide insightful analytics about the population, and also serve as a computational 

hub for deployed IoT outdoor sensors. The analytics will provide customer-driven actionable items to individual 

businesses and city-scale data to the city of Madison for future city planning. The sensors will collect audio data, 

allowing ParaDrop to provide noise pollution metrics and public safety services.

NYCLink

LinkNYC is a first-of-its-kind communications network that will bring the fastest available municipal Wi-Fi to millions of 

New Yorkers, small businesses, and visitors. The five-borough LinkNYC network, which will be funded through 

advertising revenues, will be built at no cost to taxpayers and will generate more than $500 million in revenue for the 

City over the first 12 years. 

The approach used for this program was to bring some of the best companies together to deliver a product that would 

generate a revenue stream for the City of New and free service for users. Partners include New York City, Qualcomm 

Incorporated, Titan360, Control Group, COMARK Corporation, and Antenna Design (Product Industrial Design). 

The aging network of public pay telephones for years have been a less than utilized form of communication as well as an 

eye sore on the community. The challenge of this project was to design, manufacture, install, and operate a state of the 

art networked communication system that will bring the latest technology to bear to facilitate the lives of New Yorkers 

and visitor from around the world and provide the fastest free WiFi connectivity for free.

Benefits include:

● Improve street side appearance with a state of the design and technology.

● Provide new method to utilize 911 and 311 for public information and safety.

● Creating socio-economic parity for all residents and businesses starts with LinkNYC

● Improve quality of life for NYC residents and visitors providing free internet access via state of the art WiFi 

service.

● A facility for location manufacturing and production will be established in NYC for the LinkNYC structures.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 18

● The LinkNYC program is expected to create 100 to 150 new full-time jobs in manufacturing, technology and 

advertising.

● LinkNYC will provide an estimated 650 support jobs in NYC.

● Will create a new revenue stream for NYC.

Education

Bringing Internet of Things Know-How to High School Students

Today’s students will be the ones who are designing the smart cities and communities of tomorrow. There are many 

things to learn about the underlying technologies, applications,

data characteristics, and security/privacy issues and the time to start learning is now. This project defines Internet of 

Things experiments involving sensors, hardware, software and data, and brings them to high school students through 

workshops and hackathons that students participate in. The underlying enablers are template definitions of open 

hardware, software and sensors that students can use to build sensor pods of their own designs. They program their 

pods and deploy them in their own school environments, and exchange real-time data with student teams in other 

locations. After larger amounts of data have been collected over time, the students are shown how to manipulate the 

data and examine the data sets to find similarities and differences. The broader learning lessons include learning about 

open hardware and software, how sensing systems work, what kinds of data are generated by sensors, how data 

accumulates over time, how to examine data and make comparisons, practical issues such as noisy data and time zone 

differences, working with programming languages such as Python and others, and ways to potentially utilize high-speed 

network bandwidth in locations where that’s also available. igh school students and STEM educators participate from 

the participating locations, supplemented with local college students and volunteers who help with mentoring. 

Participants include Internet of Things DC, IoT Dev Labs, Arlington County Virginia, Virginia Tech, Montgomery County 

Maryland, and high school students, STEM educators and volunteers from locations across the US.

SENAS: A Smart City Educational Network for Autistic Students

Our GCTC project focuses on the creation of a Smart City Educational Network for Autistic Students. This network 

application enables students and teachers to interact and learn from various locations including schools and homes. It 

brings together experts from diverse fields including computer networking, cyber learning, virtual reality technologies 

and autism. In this project, Dr. J. Cecil (Oklahoma State University), Dr. P. Ramanathan (University of Wisconsin Madison) 

and Dr. Mary Sweet-Darter (ABA-OK Consulting) are working with the City of Stillwater and Stillwater Public Schools. The 

Smart Cities of the future need to have schools which adopt effective and innovative cyber learning frameworks and 

approaches which take advantage of Next Generation Internet and other ‘smart’ technologies. The Centers for Disease 

Control (CDC) estimates that around 1 in 61 American children are on the autism spectrum today. Our project will help 

autistic children learn science and math concepts using ultra-fast networks and cyber learning approaches. Availability of 

educational resources and their accessibility to autistic students is important especially in terms of reducing the 

increasing costs associated with such services. Our project will facilitate providing educational services with ‘on demand’ 

access so that autistic students, educators and parents can access them anytime from various locations. We plan to 

eventually expand this network to support STEM learning for other students in Stillwater and other schools in Minnesota 

and Oklahoma. 

Resource Network for Early Childhood Care and Education (Baltimore, MD)

This GC Team will develop a Resource Network for Early Childhood Care and Education to connect parents and childcare 

providers with local resources to assist them in fostering their children’s development and successful entry into 

kindergarten. The Resource Network will be tested in a pilot neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland as the first phase of 

an effort to develop a Virtual Mentor for Early Childhood Care and Education. The overall project aims to establish an 
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 19

interactive learning environment—delivered via smartphone, tablet or laptop computer—to provide parents and 

caregivers with a virtual mentor in early childhood development, parenting best practices, and access to childcare 

resources, that is accessible to caregivers at any time or place. 

The Initial (pilot) demonstration of the Resource Network App is proposed for the Baltimore Promise Heights 

neighborhood, a U.S Department of Education Promise Neighborhood. The pilot aims to enable a group of parents to 

complete an online survey of services provided during a regular pediatric Well-Child Visit via the childcare Resource 

Network App, and provide the results to the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. 

For this test of technical feasibility and acceptability, synthetic data will be used as input to the survey, and no personally 

identifiable information will be used. The pilot will be guided by the University of Maryland Institutional Review Board 

process.

Health & Public Safety

PA 2040 (Washington, DC)

PA 2040 is a project that looks to implement IoT capabilities in ways that are simultaneously practical and exciting on 

“America’s Main Street,” Pennsylvania Avenue. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide a better, more rewarding 

experience to everyone who uses the corridor – visitors, workers, and businesses, as well as the local and federal 

governments.

The foundation for the system is Cisco’s Smart + Connected Communities platform which is built around a pervasive 

mesh Wi-Fi network. The Wi-Fi will serve to provide free internet access to the public, as well as to connect a network of 

sensors that will measure a variety of environmental conditions, traffic,

The series of sensors – provided by a numerous partners – built into this network will provide data analytics capabilities 

allowing for real time maintenance alerts, improvements to transportation management, and ultimately a better 

experience to visitors to the corridor. A sampling of the capabilities includes:

● Wayfinding including location-aware, self-guided tours and other augmented reality on mobile devices as well as 

multi-lingual interactive kiosks.

● Parking demand management allowing visitors to see where parking is plentiful or scarce.

● Improved maintenance response times.

● Emergency response management.

● Long-term public space planning.

Analytics from the public Wi-Fi will also allow for greater information about where visitors to corridor are coming from 

and will allow for better planning and programming of public space.

SCALE - Healthy Air, Healthy Water, Healthy People (Montgomery County, MD)

A safe and healthy environment supported by connected devices/sensors, or the Internet of Things (IoT) is now well 

within the reach of many people. However, too often new technologies do not benefit those who need them most: 

elderly, infirmed and vulnerable residents who are unable to afford this level of protection. The public sector already 

plays a critical role in protecting the most vulnerable around us, and can now do it more effectively and efficiently with 

IoT. In this second phase of SCALE we will focus on three primary areas: healthy air, water and people. In our testbed, a 

large senior living facility in Montgomery County, this project will establish a diverse ecosystem of devices and 

demonstrate the viability of extracting data from these devices, bringing it to an open, interoperable platform and 

leveraging it for public safety and public health. To do this Montgomery County has established the Thingstitute, a living 

laboratory for the internet of things and a hub for the various testbeds we will establish. 

Currently the Thingstitute features partnerships with the following companies and organizations via the SCALE project: 

University of California-Irvine, Massachusetts Institutes of Technology, IBM, Intel, AT&T, SigFox, Brivo Labs, Senseware, 
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 20

N5 Sensors, the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), Responder, Del Ray Analytics, 

biobright, IoT Dev Labs, IoT DC, Captiva, Earth Networks, Victory Housing and more to come. Montgomery County has 

also established a partnership with Kansas City, MO to share information on project activities and how IoT is impacting 

public operations.

Smarter Sockets: Indoor Emergency Response Locators

It is often a matter of life and death whether a first responder can quickly locate a wireless caller in distress within a 

multistory building. But current location technologies do not work well in indoor spaces or in multistory buildings, since 

receivers require a clear view to communicate with satellites. In fact, the Federal Communications Commission 

estimates that roughly 10,000 lives, per year, could be saved in the United States if indoor location accuracy were 

improved.

This project will demonstrate the feasibility of using novel smart electricalsocketsᅳembedded with a microprocessor, 

Bluetooth Low Energy (beacon), and WiFiᅳto provide an accurate dispatchable address to the indoor location of 

wireless 9-1-1 callers. The dispatchable address will include precise location tags and floor level. Providing a dispatchable 

address to a 9-1-1 caller is particularly important in instances where a caller cannot provide information directlyᅳeither 

because they do not know or cannot communicate their location due to extreme threat of danger.

Success of this project will represent a significant advancement in technology that can be deployed in virtually any 

building to provide reliable micro-location data. The technology will provide additional benefits: (i) building managers 

will be able to reduce energy consumption by conditioning each room based on the room’s real-time occupancy, (ii) 

universities would be able to automatically monitor the indoor location of their students; and (iii) municipalities could 

use the technology to design smarter, safer cities based on aggregate, indoor location data. Using networked beacon 

devices, indoor positioning will be as accessible as Google Maps is today.

Ecosystem for Smart Medical Simulation Team Training (Fairfax, VA)

In emergency medical situations where seconds count and decisions can impact a life for years to come, a team’s 

situational awareness, logistical decision-making and actions matter greatly. The critical importance of efficient and 

effective medical and logistical decision-making as well as ensuring continuity of care among the medical, trauma and 

surgical response teams in crisis situations cannot be underestimated to keep citizens and patients safe in city 

emergencies. These men and women dedicate themselves to keeping all of us safe and healthy by participating in 

rigorous high-fidelity simulation training, however, challenges to continually and efficiently improve their performance 

and response in these demanding situations remain. High fidelity simulation training in emergency response, hospital 

and surgical contexts has been shown to be effective in improving patient outcomes and research indicates the after 

action debriefing session is where the majority of learning occurs. However, what can be learned from high-stakes and 

complex team simulations is often limited by the attention, memory, and knowledge of the observers and facilitators 

during the simulation and in the debriefing session. The focus of this challenge is to provide immediate and enhanced 

information and feedback to emergency and medical response teams in the debriefing session concluding a complex, 

live-action, multi-team (e.g. emergency response, pre-hospital, surgical and post-op) simulation. Leveraging an 

extensible, interoperable system based on open specifications that dynamically collects and analyzes performance (big) 

data from multiple, networked devices in real-time, this system will track the activity of these professionals while 

engaged the live action simulation for immediate or latent analysis and display. The goal is improved learning, reflection 

and performance support in the debriefing session or in situ to ultimately improve patient care. Providing dynamic data 

collection and display by linking devices to people to actions for improved learning at the point of need from simulations 

by medical and emergency response teams in crisis situations can potentially improve their ability to learn, to perform 

and to respond efficiently and effectively to keep our citizens and their families safe and healthy. 
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 21

Energy Efficient Data Collection Street Light Post Assembly (North Branford, CT)

City Planners, Town Managers and Law Enforcement personnel are with incorporating available resources into their 

long term strategies. Developing energy efficient lighting standards which integrate smart technologies allows for an 

intelligent return on investment. The premise of our concept is that important events and information need to be 

reported and transmitted from the critical area “under the trees” on our city streets. Government agencies are 

committed to reducing energy footprints across the country. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, we further 

see that every street light assembly, whether it be new construction or an energy saving retrofit, holds the potential to 

collect and deliver information. Lighting standards offer previously unused real estate, all of which is capable of 

delivering essential information to our communities. Our entry will focus on providing discreet surveillance and quality 

facial recognition when an incident occurs at the pedestrian level. The video information will simultaneously be 

collected and transmitted to law enforcement in real time, enabling them to provide a more effect response to an 

emergency situation. Our team consists of primarily Connecticut based members, all of which are committed to 

providing a solid solution to prevent other unfortunate events. Our team consists of State agencies, large and small 

local companies as well as WIBs and Community Colleges, each ready to address a viable solution. Penn Globe, 

Connecticut Innovations, Connecticut DECD, Town of North Branford, Queralt Inc., Remote Reality, Arrow Electronics, 

Connected Development, Workforce Alliance and Gateway Community College are participants.

Array of Things: Managing Urban Air Quality (Chicago, IL)

Many cities aspire to track and manage air quality in order to manage emissions through dynamic or policy-based traffic 

management. Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of air quality is critical to designing effective sensor 

networks and closing the loop between sensing and traffic controls and policy.

In June 2015 we will demonstrate a network of air quality sensor units deployed on BigBelly waste units in Chicago’s 

central business district, with open data published to a cloud based system that allows the air quality data to be 

analyzed in conjunction with other data including weather and traffic flow. If possible in June 2015 or shortly thereafter, 

we will demonstrate similar capabilities in Portland, Seattle, New York City, and Boston.

Chattanooga GASP: Geolocated Allergen Sensing Platform

This platform is a way to combine Cyber Physical Systems and Chattanooga’s gigabit network to provide real time 

information relevant to a major health concern of the city – allergies. This pilot project will deploy two types of sensors 

to detect pollen: 1) streaming sensors to provide size-based, real-time pollen and particulate data, and 2) off-line 

collectors to provide accurate, microscopic analysis of environmental pollen. The comparison of these two data sets will 

result in determining whether algorithms could be created to make the real-time data more valuable based on 

relationships discovered between the real-time and microscopic analysis. Integrating this local data with higher-level 

context from multiple NASA remote sensing data using machine learning will enable the creation of more accurate 

information. Chattanoogans suffer terrible allergies as a result of geographic conditions that concentrate pollen 

particulates into high pollen counts and equals general misery and malaise. This pilot platform’s advanced data 

collection will be channeled into visualization tools that can then be used to support a real-time Pollution View for maps. 

This can be used by residents of the City or visitors to the City as an additional tool for planning outdoor activities. The 

test-bed is Chattanooga, TN. The partners located in Chattanooga are The Enterprise Center, the Chattanooga Public 

Library, and the Electric Power Board. We are also leveraging experts in the fields of environmental assessment and 

pollen distribution from the University of Texas – Dallas and the University of Tulsa. 
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 22

Energy & Utilities

Project X: GigaBit SMART City Project (Highland, IL)

Smart utility meters solving demands for data, voice, and video

Can you imagine the impact on the world whereby everyone had premium access to the superhighway of information? 

The US Federal government and several private groups have partnered together to bring this innovation to reality for 

the City of Highland, Illinois and Tri-County Electric Cooperative in Hooker, Oklahoma.

The City of Highland is currently the only gigabit city in the state of Illinois with Internet access up to a gigabit of 

information. Developing an entirely new infrastructure is both costly and time consuming; therefore the solution is in 

leveraging the existing capabilities of the electric utility.

Project X is designed to seamlessly transform communities by allowing every citizen the advantage of exceptional 

connectivity like never before. Utility meters can be upgraded as “Smart Meters or Meter-less Meters” by linking into a 

wireless network to provide data, voice, and video into homes and businesses.

Imagine first responders having access to significantly more information before, during, and after an emergency, or 

millions of school children accessing pictures and videos from around the world in fractions of a second. Even the 

elimination of most electrical outages because of the ability to actively monitor, identify, and resolve issues before an 

outage could occur.

Additionally, Cyber Security will be an intrinsic component of Project X to protect data privacy and prevent unwanted 

intrusion, which will also expand to securing other utilities including water and gas.

SmartCity Utilities Infrastructure

Our initiative addresses smart solutions across water and lighting infrastructures. AT&T and IBM are coming together 

with Mueller, GE and Captiva to provide sustainable solutions. 

Every year millions of gallons of water are lost through leaks in aged water pipes that date back to the turn of the 

century in cities around the world. Unaccounted for water is as high as 40% in cities around the world. The problem is 

that pipes were typically installed in the ground and information is unknown until leaks are reported, typically above the 

ground. Our demonstration scenario will use AT&T wireless network (LTE) infrastructure and inputs from sensory input 

sent to a smart dashboard. Sensors would be placed in the water distribution and fire protection infrastructure that will 

utilize wireless networks to send information such as pressure, temperature, and leak detection. Cities benefit by using 

sensors on fire hydrants and distribution infrastructure where leaks can be proactively located – instead of waiting for 

leaks to be reported. 

With smart energy there is an opportunity to use smart lighting solutions to save energy and address smart cities 

applications such as video surveillance and parking and traffic management. The demonstration scenario will use AT&T 

wireless networks (LTE) infrastructure and inputs form smart lighting sensors for multipurpose applications. We will 

introduce a solution that not only is used for lighting control but also for other near applications such as traffic 

management, parking and video imaging and asset management. 

Intelligent Connectivity & Smart Water Assets Management (Cincinnati, OH)

The Smart Water Assets Project brings together subject matter expertise from a utility (Greater Cincinnati Water 

Works), a system integrator (CH2M HILL), and a rapid prototype development and technology company (Qualcomm 

Technologies, Inc.). The program objective is to demonstrate how Smart Water Assets can fill a major gap currently 

existing in the water, wastewater & environmental industry effecting how utilities routinely collect, transmit, process, 

and use system and asset data, and how that data can be more effectively converted to “actionable” information for 

decision-making. 
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 23

Smart Assets will mitigate longstanding challenges that are becoming more urgent, such as drought management. There 

are several different ways this will be done: 

✓ Smart water assets will improve the ability of the utility to achieve a reduction of risk for unusual operational 

situations, such as the Elk River Chemical Spill. 

✓ Use of the technology will enable water utilities to improve the management of water demand and supply and 

this will be particularly beneficial during times of drought. 

✓ Smart water assets will enable utilities to better protect against environmental impacts. A primary example of 

this is use of the technology to provide advanced warning of sewage overflows thus enabling mitigative actions. 

✓ Water and Wastewater utilities will have increased access to large data sets and information, and improved 

responses, which will result in better operational optimization, reduced operations and maintenance costs, and 

improved regulatory compliance. 

✓ Use of the technology in modeling situations will result in lower lifecycle costs in achieving environmental 

outcomes, in capital cost reductions. 

5D Smart San Francisco 2030 District (San Francisco, CA)

Buildings are responsible for 52% of the city's carbon emissions and 75% of the city's largest 2,000 commercial buildings 

fall within the boundaries of the 2.2 sq mi Area of Interest. While the local market benefits from the $1B that California 

utility ratepayers invest annually in energy efficiency incentives, ambitious building energy and green codes, and a large 

concentration of architectural and engineering talent, data about energy performance in buildings is a key missing 

ingredient. While Class A properties are well managed, governments, capital markets, real estate investors, property 

managers, commercial tenants, and even utilities lack comprehensive, granular, actionable data about the specific 

energy efficiency opportunities and solutions waiting to be tapped at the level of individual buildings and tenant spaces. 

And no single hub holds all of the information necessary to harness data in service of sustainability. 

The principal goal of the 5D Smart San Francisco 2030 District project is to create that hub. This will make the necessary 

data and information easily available to building owners in the city in order to accelerate and expand investment in 

energy efficiency retrofits cost effectively and within a reasonable timeframe. The platform will serve as a collaboration 

tool for the city’s major government agencies, private commercial buildings owners, academic institutions, energy 

management solutions providers, standards organizations, network and telecommunications companies, and energy 

retrofit finance firms to work together in ways they never have before. Use of the platform will accelerate awareness 

and adoption of best practices and best-in-class energy management solutions in the industry.

Energy Storage based Adaptive Demand Response in Smart Commercial Buildings (NYSERDA)

The objective of the project is to develop and demonstrate how battery electrical storage can be used synergistically in 

conjunction with a commercial building’s other demand response (DR) capabilities, namely curtailment (e.g., modified 

temperature set points, light dimming) and load shifting (e.g., pre-cooling). The overarching aim is to simultaneously 

reduce grid stress, the need for environmentally and economically disadvantageous peak generation capacity, and 

building' ownership cost. This will be achieved by optimizing arbitrage savings in DR tariffs versus storage equipment 

cost, while monitoring building comfort as a constraint. It is hypothesized that strategic battery dispatch in coordination 

with other DR capabilities can increase the magnitude and duration of load reductions, thus significantly lowering 

electric bills, while improving the building’s capability to maintain occupant comfort and services during such reductions. 

The project outcome will be a complete pre-commercial energy storage and building management device that integrates 

mechanical and electrical systems to provide load-shedding and energy storage assets. The device will leverage existing 

control features of advanced commercial building automation. It will be optimized and tested on actual tariffs. The 

project team will also evaluate the costs and benefits of conducting a full demonstration in a commercial building in 

New York City. The project team consists of Urban Electric Power (Lead), Siemens Corporation Corporate Technology, 

Columbia University, and City University of New York, NY-BEST.
Global City Teams Challenge TECH JAM  February 12-13, 2015  NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD

Page 24

Distributed Mobile Storage for Resilience – Plugin Electric Vehicles (PEVs)

The project will demonstrate an integration of multi-directional charging and load prioritization between stationary and 

mobile storage devices, power grids and microgrids. The overarching goal of the project is to demonstrate a system 

designed to be both economically sustainable during normal operations and provide for electricity resilience during 

electrical outages.

Demonstrating grid scale power levels and PEV integration in Washington DC; in Gulu, we use other mobile storage 

devices, like computers and phones, as proxies (and to demonstrate flexibility of the algorithms) to stress the algorithms 

in an environment that experiences numerous and extended grid failures.

We will demonstrate the impact of charging optimization algorithms using up-to 4 charging ports at the DC EcoDistrict 

site. Two of these ports will be reserved for fleet vehicles; the remaining 2 ports will be available for commercial 

customers. The typical mechanism for charging is first come first serve. We will implement algorithms that better meet 

customer needs and more efficiently use available power and energy.

Initial deployment will likely consist of one or more charging stations located within the EcoDistrict and in Gulu, where 

we will implement charging algorithms related to the use of laptops, cellphones and a water pump. The fragile grid in 

Gulu offers the opportunity to demonstrate the algorithms in an environment with 100s of hours of electrical outage per 

month.