As part of Smart Cities Week, the White House announced Monday that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Global City Teams Challenge is establishing “super-clusters” comprised of smart city teams spanning multiple cities, and Portland is one of them.
The purpose of these clusters is to “take on grand challenges too big for any single city team to tackle.” Portland was selected as a lead city. Other cities include Atlanta; Bellevue, Washington; Columbus, Ohio; Kansas City, Kansas (and Kansas City, Missouri); and Newport News, Virginia.
In addition to NIST, other federal agencies participating in this initiative include the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Project teams will collaborate to develop “blueprints” for shared solutions to common challenges including intelligent transportation systems, resilience to large-scale natural disasters and air quality. These solutions will then be implemented across multiple cities and communities.
In August, the city of Portland received an award of $100,000 from NIST to expand on the Global City Teams Challenge project along Southeast Powell by field testing air quality sensors and performing a roadside deployment of sensors.
This project will be run alongside an NSF Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research award of $200,000 awarded to PSU researchers to evaluate the types of air quality sensors that can be deployed and the development of a sensor data management system, a key component of future smart city applications.
