From Survey to Catalog: Capturing Smart City Projects

The Smart City Catalog was inspired by the work of the Internet of Things Collaborative’s (IoTC) Public Sector Advisory Committee.

The committee is comprised of public sector leaders that support IoTC applied research projects by providing strategic guidance and input on community related activities and needs. The committee was interested in finding a way to capture and understand the landscape of smart city projects in the region and answer the question of “What are we currently doing and where do we need to go?”.

With support from the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland State University (CSU) and the IoTC, the Smart Cities Catalog Project was developed to address these questions. The goal of the project is to gather information on smart cities projects and publish the results online so public sector organizations can better work together to solve community problems. The catalog aims to provide opportunities for public service organizations actively working on smart cities projects to pursue funding opportunities together and increase the visibility of their smart cities, internet of things (IoT), and data-driven decision making projects in Cuyahoga County. The information shared will help amplify the work of public sector organizations focused on smart cities initiatives, as well as connect organizations pursuing similar goals.

The project is led by a team from the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University; Dr. Obed Pasha, Assistant Professor, and Cait Kennedy, Ph.D. student. An advisory council comprising of public sector leaders was created to provide close guidance on each step of the project.

To better understand how smart cities function and interact in the region and to assess how organizations define smart cities, the project leaders conducted several orientation interviews with leaders in the public and digital sectors. The catalog project team defines smart cities initiatives as projects that “employ IoT technology to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, and equity of public services”. After analyzing the results of these interviews, as well as regularly meeting with the advisory council, the project leaders developed the survey and distributed it to more than 185 organizations in the region.

When the survey period ends, the project team will standardize and analyze the responses in preparation to translate them into a public facing, user friendly online catalog. This catalog will become a part of the IoTC website in the coming months.

If you are interested in participating in the “Smart Cities Survey” and “Smart Cities Catalog”, please click here to complete the five minute survey or copy and paste the following link into your browser: https://urbancsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3UENUQGjrQIlZoV