Across the city’s five boroughs, New York agencies are exploring innovative approaches to building a smarter, more equitable and responsive city. The objective is to make New York City the most innovative and tech-friendly city in the world.
NYC appears to be well on its way to achieving that goal. It was awarded the “2016 Best Smart City” by the Smart City Expo World Congress, an award that recognized NYC’s cutting-edge smart city initiatives as able to resolve urban challenges and benefit residents and the city itself. The NYC smart city approach is to focus on ensuring that what the city is doing has a positive impact on the citizens, residents and tourists.
The city is trying to shift its focus to ensure that smart and connected infrastructure systems interoperate with each other to provide a fundamentally improved user experience, said Miguel Gamiño, the city’s chief technology officer.
One NYC smart city project being implemented is LinkNYC, a communications network that will replace over 7,500 payphones across the five boroughs with new structures called Links. Each Link provides fast, free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging and a tablet for access to city services, maps and directions, Gamiño explained. LinkNYC is free because it’s funded through advertising. Its digital outdoor advertising network will enable companies to reach residents and visitors, as well as generate more than a half-billion dollars in revenue for the city.
“People can use the internet; our 311 app [a one-stop shop for all government information and nonemergency services] is loaded on it so you can request information from 311 from that Link device,” said Gamiño. “It also lets you make a phone call and charge your mobile devices via a USB charging port.”
NYC is also in the second phase of the Connected Vehicle Pilot Project, a national effort managed by the U.S. Department of Transportation to deploy, test and activate mobile and roadside technologies and enable multiple connected vehicle applications.
The city is currently designing, building and testing next-generation connected vehicle technology to keep the public moving more quickly and safely. The project is part of the city’s Vision Zero Action Plan aimed at ending traffic deaths and injuries on city streets.
During phase one of the pilot, the NYC Department of Transportation prepared a deployment concept to carry out a connected vehicle program involving up to 8,000 vehicles, including cars, taxis, trucks, pick-up trucks and buses. The goal of the pilot is to enable the city to develop and deploy more than 15 safety applications to provide in-vehicle warnings to drivers.
In addition, the transportation department is evaluating vendor proposals for mobile wearable devices as part of the pilot, as well as a mobile app that will provide intersection movement guidance for visually impaired pedestrians.
Source: IOT Agenda
