Kansas City, MO & KS – Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, together with KC Digital Drive, collaborated on a joint proposal to participate as lead cities and host Smart Cities Challenge events as part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC).
The White House announced today that Kansas City MO & KS have been jointly selected as lead cities and will host two “SuperCluster” meetings in 2017 that bring together leading public and private sector organizations to tackle challenges that are too big for any single city team to tackle.
“Today’s announcement by the White House is further validation that Kansas City continues to be a global leader in civic innovation,” said Sly James, Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. “We commend the White House for their continued leadership in helping cities across the nation come together to tackle difficult challenges,” continued James.
“Our selection as global lead cities reflects a spirit of strong regional collaboration. Innovation is a key priority of my administration and participation in the Global Smart Cities initiative will help us create smarter, healthier communities,” said Mark Holland, Mayor of Kansas City, Kansas.
“KC Digital Drive is excited to support regional collaboration, and today’s announcement is a great example of how we are stronger when we work together.” said Aaron Deacon, KC Digital Drive Managing Director.
For the White House Announcement click here – September 26, 2016
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NIST’s Global City Teams Challenge is establishing multi-team super-clusters to take on grand challenges too big for any single city team to tackle. Examples include multi-city resilience to large-scale natural disasters, intelligent transportation systems that work in any city, and regional air quality improvements through coordinated local action. This initiative brings together groups of communities formed around lead cities—Portland, Oregon; Atlanta, Georgia; Newport News, Virginia; Columbus, Ohio; Bellevue, Washington; Kansas City, Kansas; and Kansas City, Missouri—to work with NIST and its collaborators, including the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, NSF, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, IBM, AT&T, CH2M, Verizon, Qualcomm Intelligent Solutions, Intel, US Ignite, and Urban-X, to develop ‘blueprints’ for shared solutions that will be collaboratively implemented in multiple cities and communities.
