Venture Smarter will host an informational webinar for the Smart Infrastructure Challenge at 3:00 pm (EST) on Friday, April 20th, 2018. If you would like to attend this online session, please fill out the form below and we will send you a calendar invite with login information.

The trend in 'smart cities' and the relative challenges associated with the rapid development of efforts has been to prioritize and favor major metropolitan areas. While the 2018 Smart Infrastructure Challenge is open to major cities and regions, the program was specifically designed to enable small and medium sized cities, counties, states, and regions to realize the same smart city opportunities, and success stories.

The 2018 Smart Infrastructure Challenge calls for regional teams to add a layer of smart and connected technologies into ongoing and emerging infrastructure planning. Here are the top five themes addressed by participating teams that have already submitted their letter of intent.

This week leaders from several federal agencies, public-private-partnerships, and leading enterprise organizations began releasing program and partnership details for the 2018 Smart Infrastructure Challenge that was first previewed at The National Press Club in February along with the launch of the Congressional Smart Cities Caucus.

At the Smart Regions Congress in Washington DC, Co-founder of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, Jake Rishavy, talked about addressing some of society's most pressing problems by co-creating the next generation of technologies using a test bed at multi-city scale.

Recently, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus have all been ramping up efforts around smart technology and policy planning and development. At the state level, leaders have recently formed Drive Ohio, and have been actively investing in growing tech-based and tech-enabled economies.

As the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Kansas City, Missouri, Bob Bennett leads the Smart City initiatives.  At Venture Smarter's Smart Regions Congress in Washington DC, he shared 3 lessons learned while leading those initiatives.

The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology division is dedicated to collaboration across sectors, focusing on public safety, security, privacy, and commerce. André Hentz spoke about their efforts at the Smart Regions Congress in Washington DC on February 15, 2018.

TJ Costello of Cisco expresses alignment with Venture Smarter's priority to address security in connectivity, as well as the critical requirements of data governance policy to position regions for success.  He spoke at the Smart Regions Congress, including the "Internet of Everything, Connectivity and Security in Smart Regions" leadership forum.

At the Smart Regions Congress, Chief Tom Synan shared his perspective of the opioid epidemic and stressed the importance of collaboration among those involved with both the problem and the solution. He also spoke on the "Internet of Everything, Connectivity and Security in Smart Regions" panel with Chris Resendez, TJ Costello, André Hentz, and Bob Bennett to discuss cyber-physical security and mitigating risk.