DEPARTMENT: Office of Innovation
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Brian Dillard, Interim Chief Innovation Officer
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City-wide
SUBJECT:
Update of the CivTechSA program and year-one summary.
SUMMARY:
This item will provide a status update to the Committee on ongoing activities related to a SmartSA initiative: Innovation Zones.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
In FY 2017, the City of San Antonio launched a Smart City Program, called SmartSA. This vision established to help guide future smart cities projects and strategies is to build a connected, inclusive and resilient community supporting a high quality of life. The first two key priorities focus areas are transportation and access to services.
To advance these focus areas, the City of San Antonio in partnership with CPS Energy, VIA Metropolitan Transit, San Antonio Water System and San Antonio River Authority, three Innovation Zones have been identified. These Innovation Zones (Brooks, Downtown, Medical Center) will serve as pilot areas to provide an opportunity for the Smart SA partners to test various smart city technologies in a defined geographic area prior to a large scale implementation.
On April 24, 2018 the Innovation and Technology committee was briefed on the creation of innovation zones, subsequently on June 6, 2018 at a "B" session the City Council was briefed on the concept of innovation zones and strategy for implementation.
One of the key components to the innovations zones strategy is community input. In order to ensure that the potential solutions to be tested at the innovation zones address community challenges, SmartSA is collecting input from the community on the types of challenges they would like to see solved in each zone. An update on outreach efforts and plans will be provided to the Committee at the December 11, Innovation and Technology Community Meeting.
The goal of the public input strategy is to reach out to the community who lives, works, plays and visits t...
Click here for full text