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Institute for eGovernment

Exploring the Future of Infrastructure: Solar Roadways and Smart Cities

As we look towards the future of infrastructure, two key concepts stand out: solar roadways and smart cities. These innovative ideas are set to revolutionize our urban landscapes, transforming the way we live, work, and interact with our environment.

The first part of the project, which was completed in May 2010, covered three routes— Northern Ring I that covers Babati, Arusha, Moshi and Tanga; Northern Ring II that covers Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Iringa, Dodoma and Singida and Western Link I and II that take care of Shinyanga, Mwanza, Geita, Biharamulo, Rusumo and Kabanga.

The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., and Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., updates the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and establishes a National Office for Cyberspace in the Executive Office of the President.

The amendment was attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, which passed the House Friday by a 229-186 vote.

More pointedly, a new “Speed Matters” study conducted by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) has revealed that Internet speeds in the U.S. leave the country trailing badly in the overall international standings.

The three-phase project, which was meant to be ready by now, has been mired in controversy since it started in 2006.

The cable is meant to be linked to the submarine cable that arrived at the East African coast recently and to provide faster and cheaper Internet access to Uganda.

Congress will continue to weigh provisions of a $1 trillion infrastructure package in late September while the private sector begins assessing how it might cash in on public projects for roads, bridges and broadband as well as smart transportation and electric vehicles.

One provision sets aside $500 million in grants for smart community projects to improve transportation efficiency and safety. A separate resolution in Congress also calls for setting transportation priorities on achieving zero traffic deaths in the U.S. compared to more than 42,000 in 2020 alone.

The Secure Worker Access Consortium (SWAC) program provides the tools necessary to build a trusted community of workers with the proper skill sets who can enter and re-enter a critical infrastructure zone during a crisis. The program is in place at some of our highest value targets, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, its bridges, airports and tunnels, as well as in other sensitive facilities throughout the region. The lessons learned are important, as is the mission of building trusted communities.

Some higher education institutions are turning to a hyperconverged infrastructure to improve connectivity.

Education’s New Normal? Building a Better Infrastructure for Remote Learning

The pandemic has shifted education from the classroom to the home, with many students across the country – from kindergarten to college – now engaged in remote learning.

According to a recent Brookings Institute Metro Policy Paper, in less than two decades broadband access has become one of the foundations of the American economy, joining clean water, waste management and energy as essential infrastructure.

In California, the General Planning process provides guidance on how communities should plan for and implement essential infrastructure. The Governor's Office of Planning and Research published General Planning Guidance, August 2017, outlining critical planning elements for land use, housing, circulation, and conservation, with recommended elements for safety, air quality, and environmental justice.

The “smart city” concept has been adopted by cities and counties globally. While the term is inexact, a typical vision is of an IT-enabled environment that efficiently and effectively delivers public services; enables informed, proactive decision-making by the leadership; and promotes sustainability through better resource utilization.

To deliver on this vision, smart cities require a massive deployment of information and communications technologies (ICT), including wired and wireless technologies. Included in this ICT array would be a multitude of networks and sensors in an Internet of Things (IoT) framework that permeates all sectors of modern life. Applications include smart electric grids, intelligent transportation systems, integrated monitoring systems and decision-support systems, to name the most prominent.

Solano County, along with Contra Costa and Alameda counties, is in line waiting to be approved for funding from the California Public Utilities Commission, which is allocating $125 million to create two new programs, a revolving loan fund for capital infrastructure and the Rural and Urban Regional Broadband Consortia Account.

The account will provide grant funds to eligible consortia to cover the cost of deployment activities other than the capital costs of facilities.

California County Tries to Roll Out Wireless Broadband to Farms

The Original Story: In July 2012, Government Technology wrote about a coalition of federal, state and local interests, including Fresno County, working to secure high-speed wireless broadband to take California’s San Joaquin Valley agricultural sector to the next level. Wireless broadband would allow farmers to put moisture sensors into the soil beneath individual trees, like olives and almonds, so that each tree gets exactly the right amount of water. Wireless technology also would allow farmers to incorporate GPS into their operations.

But Google isn’t hemming and hawing about gigabit Internet. Its message is clear. The cities that Google chose to be its first fiber cities will be at the forefront of the next generation of Web technology, said Google Communications Associate Jenna Wandres. “We really believe that this is an investment in the future of the Web,” she said.

The $1 trillion infrastructure bill moving through Congress has the potential to be a game-changer for cities as they consider projects in areas like broadband connectivity and other urban technology projects.

Urban technology advocates are closely watching the development of a major piece of infrastructure legislation as it makes its way through Congress, anticipating a rapid expansion in connectivity, electric vehicle adoption, transit improvements and more, should the measure pass.

The most in-demand products and services in local governments fall into three interconnected buckets, says Matthew Britt, general manager of smart cities at Honeywell. The buckets, he says, are urban mobility, sustainability and resilience, and public safety.

“Urban mobility begins with road infrastructure and understanding how to move people around cities more effectively and sustainably. At Honeywell, we have analytics capabilities to optimize traffic flow so that citizens can move more effectively based on their needs at any given time,” he explains. He adds that his firm’s recent collaboration with Mastercard helps enhance the citizen experience with city services like public transportation and parking. “That makes their interaction with these services seamless through contactless payments.”<

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law by President Joe Biden on Nov. 15, 2021, differs from past infrastructure investments not only in its size but also its emphasis on addressing long-standing and persistent racial injustice. This major investment comes at a time when smart-city initiatives, which aim to use technology to make cities more responsive to their residents’ needs, are growing more common around the world.

Smart cities are made possible by high-speed internet connections. They rely on big data, algorithms and the internet of things to better serve their increasingly diverse communities. For example, smart cities might use data collected from wireless sensors to predict the number of buses that need to be in circulation at a given time of day to reduce wait times.

What may seem like the neighborly thing to do is actually a practice that can help cities save money on IT services: sharing.

When Melrose, Mass., moved forward with an IT infrastructure upgrade and data center consolidation in 2010 after receiving grant funding from the state, the city developed a scalable model to allow other cities to share its multitenant cloud platform.

It was in the early 2000s when Jim Misener, chair of the SAE C-V2X Technical Committee, first started to watch short-range communication come into form and the emerging ability for cars to “talk” to surrounding infrastructure. “Smart cities” had not yet become a common term.

Misener said the technology peaked SAE International’s interest, and the organization, which develops global standards, quickly set to work creating a set of standards to shape the way cities deploy smart infrastructure.

A survey of several hundred public officials at all levels of government polled their thoughts on artificial intelligence, resiliency, climate change and more when thinking on the infrastructure needs of tomorrow.

Better broadband, more multimodal transportation options and an increasing awareness around cybersecurity and artificial intelligence are some of what government-sector officials note when asked about the evolution of infrastructure in the U.S.