At the beginning of an innovation cycle, public sector members get together for research and discussions, uncovering specific problems requiring solutions. Ideas for all 20 cities are added to a master list. Then, everyone in the alliance comes together and prioritizes the ideas.
The top options are then promoted to the private sector vendors, including Arrow, Hitachi, Verizon and others.
“When we find a match, we’ll pull the entities together and initiate a project,” Rishavy says. One of the alliance’s most recent projects was a three-city collaboration on traffic signals. From a practical perspective, the project was designed to improve the flow of traffic between the cities even though they have different signal technology and networks. If a car accident affects one city, traffic signals can detour drivers from other cities around the problem.
“It improved the capacity and throughput of existing hard transportation infrastructure by utilizing adaptive signals,” Rishavy says.
MORE FROM STATETECH: Find out how different states are going on a smart state journey.
Montgomery, Ala., Drives Innovation with Community Participation
Innovation can also happen when cities and counties bring constituents and business owners into the innovation lab process. Montgomery, Ala., recently brought its community into one of its projects focused on public safety. The city designated a two-block stretch as a living lab, where it can test technologies and new projects, and it’s going outside of those parameters to improve security for all residents and businesses.
Montgomery is installing webcams on top of smart poles as part of what it calls its STAR Watch crime-fighting program. But those installations can’t possibly cover the entire city, says Chris Conway, Montgomery’s director of public works.
“Any camera that is web-based can be used by our law enforcement, so we asked local businesses and residents to get involved, signing up to connect their cameras to our back end,” Conway says of STAR Watch.
Within a few weeks, the program signed up more than 1,500 organizations, including local school districts. In January, the program was put to the test when Montgomery law enforcement got a report of someone discharging a weapon inside of a high school. The program includes cameras from Arlo, Honeywell and other established manufacturers.
“Because the school’s cameras are part of the STAR Watch program, we were able to get eyes inside of the school very fast. We knew more about how to handle what was going on rather than just showing up on the scene,” Conway says. “We were able to very safely take control of the situation and defuse it.”
Wake County’s Richardson says she hopes her county’s CREATEspace attracts similar projects that will improve quality of life and safety. The possibilities resulting from so many different departments and entities involved makes innovation labs very appealing.
“We want to be able to offer — to our emergency medical services, to our fire services, to our sheriff — a place where they can come and see new offerings and cutting-edge technology from vendors, so that they can make decisions about what they want to explore or different tools that they want to use,” Richardson says. “It’s giving us opportunities that were never there before.”