Seven finalists announced for US Smart City Challenge

Seven US cities have been selected for the final stage of the US Department of Transport’s Smart City Challenge to win US$40 million that will assist them implement smart technologies into their transport networks.

The announcement was made by Anthony Foxx, US Transport Secretary, who has pledged up to US$40 million to one city to help it define what it is to be a ‘smart city’ and become the country’s first city to fully integrate innovative technologies–self-driving cars, connected vehicles, and smart sensors.

Austin, Columbus, Denver, Kansas City (Missouri), Pittsburgh, Portland and San Francisco will each have the opportunity to win the funding plus an additional US$10 million from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. that will support the winning city’s electric vehicle deployment and other carbon emission reduction strategies.

“The level of excitement and energy the Smart City Challenge has created around the country far exceeded our expectations,” said Foxx. “After an overwhelming response–78 applications in total–we chose to select seven finalists instead of five because of their outstanding potential to transform the future of urban transportation.”

Foxx also announced a new Smart City Challenge partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud services platform, which will provide guidance to the finalists to help them implement AWS services for smart city solutions, as well as an award of US$1 million of credits to the challenge winner for Amazon’s cloud and professional services. AWS will collaborate with the department on efforts to engage the startup community, and bring their ideas to the finalists.

The seven finalists will receive a US$100,000 grant to further develop their proposals. Whereas the first phase called for a high-level overview, the winning city will be selected based on their ability to ‘think big’, and provide a detailed roadmap on how they will integrate innovative technologies to prototype the future of transport in their city.

Other partners that have signed up to the challenge include; Mobileye that will install it’s shield technology onto the winning city’s buses to avoid collisions with cyclists and pedestrians; Autodesk that will provide the winner with access and training on 3-D visualisations for major engineering projects; and NXP which will provide the winning city with wireless communication modules that allow cars to exchange data like upcoming hazards.

The winning city will be announced in June.