Washington, D.C., May 03, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Smart City Works, the world’s first business actuator, a next generation business accelerator focused on infrastructure innovation and the built environment, is hosting a day-long seminar on Tuesday, May 15th in Washington, DC as part of Infrastructure Week 2018.
The Future Won’t Wait. Neither Can We is the 2018 theme of the non-profit national Infrastructure Week and of the Smart City Works seminar. The 6th annual National Infrastructure Week is a national week of events; media coverage; and education and issue advocacy to elevate infrastructure as a critical issue impacting America's economy, society, security and future.
The Smart City Works seminar will focus on the intersection of the physical and digital worlds—bringing together experts in building smarter communities and cities using connected solutions—and exploring ways to more urgently solve and advance some of the greatest infrastructure needs today. Whether more efficient construction and operation of roads, bridges, tunnels and public transportation, the control and management of energy usage that reduces costs and carbon emissions, or the use of sensors incorporated into assets that improve quality of life and enable greater public safety, more resilient communities, and more effective response to and mitigation of natural disasters – technology is the lifeblood of next generation public investment in sustainable infrastructure.
Smart City Works is hosting the event in Washington, DC to engage the broader infrastructure community in a discussion focused on the urgency to stop talking and start acting on a national vision for infrastructure and associated plan to pay for it. America’s global competitiveness and the vitality of our cities will be determined by the infrastructure investments we make (or don’t end up making) today. There is widespread agreement that our infrastructure, our safety, our quality of life, and our economic strength are all in harm’s way absent significant government investment in infrastructure and associated technologies and policies that can improve the way we design, build, and operate cities today.
“It is absolutely the Time To Build,” said Greg Sauter, one of the co-founders of Smart City Works. “The urgency and necessity for smart innovation and investment in infrastructure could not be more important in addressing the great challenges of the day. We are proud to promote the voices of visionaries, analysts and entrepreneurs, from small to big companies, and across the public sector as well, who are working together to “instrument” our infrastructure. With sensors, connectivity, clouds, applications, analytics and full systems, we can manage assets better, dramatically improving the quality of life of citizens, while equally dramatically reducing the requirement for tax dollars through ‘built-in’ automation and intelligence.”
Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke (NY-09), co-chair of the Congressional Smart Cities Caucus, and one of the invited speakers to the seminar, says the theme and the event are critically important to advancing thinking and action on how we build and re-build America: “I know that the very notion of a smart city invokes endless possibilities. My colleague Rep. Darrell Issa and I formed the Caucus as a way to bring together lawmakers, industry stakeholders and community leaders to share ideas and best practices. I am honored to call Smart City Works a thought leader and partner in this space and look forward to the great things that will come from the Smart City Works Infrastructure Week: Digital Community Seminar.”
According to the organizers of Infrastructure Week, “too many Americans are waiting. We’re waiting in traffic, on bus and subway platforms, and in airport terminals. We’re waiting for water mains to stop breaking. We’re waiting for goods to get to grocery shelves on time. We’re waiting to connect high-speed internet to more homes, schools, and businesses. We’re waiting for a security energy grid that can withstand the challenges of the 21st century. We’re waiting for the high-quality jobs that investment in infrastructure creates. We’re waiting for modern, fast, reliable, and safe infrastructure.”
- The poor quality of our nation’s roads costs the average motorist $533 each year in auto repairs, and commuters waste 42 hours and $1,200 in fuel per person and idling in traffic.
- Aging and strained water utilities are rushing to keep pace with demand, while water-reliant businesses from breweries to automakers lose as much as $5,800 per employee for each day of disrupted service.
- More than $1.3 trillion in property lies in the path of under-maintained aging levees, dams, and other critical infrastructure, putting whole communities at risk.
Given private and public company investment over the last few years, with the advent of 5G networking, and other local networking advancements, more and more communities are deploying revolutionary connected technologies including affordable, advanced sensors that enable everything from predictive maintenance, to reducing traffic congestion, improving health care delivery, crowd-sourced business models in the sharing-economy, increased productivity and performance in construction, and greater security to safeguard communities from crime and other hazards.
Robert Mazer, also a co-founder of Smart City Works said, “We’re bringing together visionary business leaders across a number of technologies and solutions, to share what’s possible, what’s working well already, and what’s needed to build a smarter future. It’s time to build and modernize America’s infrastructure, and it’s time to do that with smart, secure, and resilient connected technologies, embedded in our nation’s infrastructure.”
Join Smart City Works and dozens of leading doers and thinkers who are bringing together physical and digital infrastructure for connected communities. Learn how innovators are instrumenting new infrastructure with IoT, software, cloud, machine learning, and intelligence, and advancing new ways to finance infrastructure, as a way of making the design, construction, and operation of new roads, bridges, public transportation, public stadiums, public parks, public schools, water facilities, public safety systems, and healthcare, smarter, more efficient, and safer, and our communities more livable and resilient.
It is #TimeToBuild.
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SMART CITY WORKSTM is a new class of business accelerator, called a BUSINESS ACTUATOR, that can more rapidly move early stage ventures to commercialization, reduce risk for downstream investors, and improve likelihood of product uptake in the marketplace. Our mission is to accelerate innovation and speed commercialization of solutions that improve the livability, operations, and resilience of cities. We are uniquely focused on urban infrastructure, the built environment, and on changing the way we design, build, and operate civil infrastructure. Our Spring and Fall sessions are designed to propel graduating companies into the marketplace, endowed with proven products, and equipped with the skills to grow and compete for funding and market share. For more information about this event, visit the event website at http://www.smartdigitalinfrastructure.org/ or the Smart City Works website at: www.smartcityworks.io.
More information about Infrastructure Week can be found here: http://infrastructureweek.org/