bee smart city partner Leading Cities is now accepting applications for its second edition of the AcceliCITY smart city startup accelerator. Last year’s inaugural edition of the contest worked with 27 semi-finalists selected from more than 550 applications from over 40 countries.

“The goal of the AcceliCITY program is to facilitate sustainable growth, resiliency and quality-of-life improvements for cities around the world by addressing the critical needs of Smart City startups,” says Michael Lake, President and CEO of Leading Cities. “These startups are developing the innovative solutions to municipal challenges in the 21st century.”.

AcceliCITY offers the chance for startups to secure what they need most - paid projects to build their portfolio and validate their solutions. This edition will focus on the challenges of smart water and smart mobility through pioneering partnerships with the cities of New Bedford, Massachusetts and Mount Pearl, Canada. In addition, all applicants will compete to be selected for fast-tracking to the Urban Resilience Challenge. Those selected will automatically advance to the semi-finalist stage and compete for a 1st Place prize of $75,000 and 2nd Place prize of $25,000.

Urban innovators with smart city aspirations rely on university knowledge and resources when addressing complex issues. Through access to research and thought leadership on urban challenges, smart cities benefit from partnerships with universities.

The Changing Face of Urban Innovation

When contemplating the need for urban improvement, cities once looked for efficiency gains, cost savings, and incremental, low-risk innovation to enhance local government operations. Today, urban residents demand much more from city leaders. Wicked urban problems such as homelessness, lack of affordable housing, pollution, congestion, inequality, social and digital exclusion, and environmental threats require bold thinking and a new paradigm in public sector innovation - made possible through collaboration with universities. 

Urban mobility is described as the lifeblood of modern cities, a critical economic factor, and a facilitator of smart, sustainable development. Planning a smart city that delivers effective and equitable urban mobility solutions is one of the most pressing problems for cities throughout the world. In this article — the first in a planned series — we provide a perspective on urban mobility challenges and examples of smart urban mobility solutions.

Earlier this year, bee smart city partner Leading Cities, a global network for Smart City growth and collaboration, has launched a global Smart City startup accelerator program that provides potential capital from a network of investors as well as the tools and knowledge of how to do business with cities. In this year’s edition 27 semi-finalists have been selected from more than 550 applications from over 40 countries. From this global pack of urban innovators, three startups emerged as AcceliCITY winners - one for each track of the AcceliCITY program (clean energy, city visualization and general tracks).

Boston-based Leading Cities has announced AcceliCITY, a global competition providing Smart City startups with access to international clients, capital from a global network of Smart City educated investors, and tools and knowledge in doing business with cities. The program bridges the gap between startups, cities, and businesses by providing select startups with access to Leading Cities’ proven track record of successful policy implementation, Smart City tools, and broad global network. bee smart city partners with AcceliCITY and Leading Cities to leverage its expertise and network to support Smart City startups.

Leading Cities and several partnering organizations - among them bee smart city - empower the AcceliCITY program to lower the cost of innovation for startups, cities, and corporations by streamlining the innovation and sales cycles for Smart City solutions. All partners provide access to an international network of mentors, investors, and decision-makers in city governments.

Open data could help to accelerate the development of smart cities by connecting the people most capable of creating smart city solutions with the data needed to generate and support them.

What is Open Data?

An overwhelming amount of data is being generated by both public and private concerns on an ongoing basis. This data is stored beyond the reach of most people, secured in government or proprietary databases or on individual electronic devices. The types and the depth of this data is growing as new and increasingly technological solutions are implemented to solve the problems of the governments, businesses, and private citizens of smart cities.

The potential advantages of data collection on such a scale are beyond question. Data collection is the most laborious part of any investigation, and yet the majority of global data is going largely unseen and unused. Limiting the number of people who can access it necessarily limits the number of problems to which it can be applied and, in most cases, prevents access to the people best able to apply it.

The solution to this is to make the data publicly available via an open government approach: open data.

On the 1st of November,  Sigfox's exclusive network operator Thinxtra showcased the start of its territory-wide low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT network in Hong Kong, providing cost-effective IoT (Internet of Things) connectivity for the city.

Cost-Effective LPWA Network provides IoT Connectivity

Until March 2018, 100 Sigfox base stations are expected to be installed throughout Hong Kong to provide long-range, low-bandwidth, low-power connectivity for businesses, research institutions, and government organizations to seize opportunities of the rise of IoT.

The evolution of smart cities has shifted from technology-centered approaches via government-led strategies to a human-centric focus. We have discussed this recently in our article Towards a new paradigm of the smart city.

Considering the benefits of a human-centric approach, the question is how a city can tap into the collective intelligence of citizens, entrepreneurs, businesses or other organizations to accelerate the development of a more livable and prosperous city. Collective intelligence can be considered as a key success factor for a smart city (see A review of becoming a smart city).

A growing number of cities around the globe are testing smart waste management solutions to create higher efficiency in terms of resources and costs associated with keeping their cities clean.

While equipping the bins of private households with latest sensor technology is tested only by a few cities (like Santander in Spain or Montreal in Canada), several cities start in public spaces with implementing smart waste management solutions.

The installation of smart solar-powered compacting bins can be observed in a growing number of cities (Amsterdam, Atlanta, London, Melbourne, Philadelphia, and others).

Self-powered smart urban street furniture can help cities and communities to increase the attractivity of public spaces by providing public services, information, and connectivity, while at the same time enabling the collection of valuable data for optimizing processes and reducing costs.

Cities are increasingly adopting smart street furniture solutions

Whether we talk about digital signs, smart benches or even fully-integrated smart bus stops – there are a lot of new products available in terms of smart urban street furniture. A growing number of cities and communities throughout the world are adopting these self-powered products to make life easier for citizens and visitors and to optimize the management of public infrastructure or to provide connectivity such as free WiFi.