The City of Newport’s work on becoming the first “Smart City” in the Midwest has been honored with a national innovation award.
The City has been named a 2017 Digital Edge 50 Award winner, which recognizes just 50 organizations internationally for digital transformation initiatives that have a significant and measurable impact on business.
“The complexity and scale of the initiatives in the Digital Edge 50 show how quickly organizations are progressing to the next phase of digital transformation,” said Anne McCrory, Digital Edge program chair and Group VP, Customer Experience and Operations, IDG Enterprise Events. “They are taking advantage of new capabilities, such as AI and deep machine learning, to enhance their mobile and analytics practices worldwide.
Through a collaboration with Nexigen, Beast Carbon and utilizing network technology from Cincinnati Bell, the city last week unveiled the first Smart City Node, which will ultimately be installed along Third Street directly in front of Newport on the Levee.
The smartLINK mobile node – which is named MyLo – features USB fast charging outlets, an interactive tablet for internet access, emergency calling capabilities, atmospheric sensors, data analytic devices, and two 55-inch outdoor displays for wayfinding and advertising purposes. There will also be integrated EV charging stations in select areas.
The nodes – developed by Beast Carbon of Evendale and Newport-based Nexigen – will be connected with high-speed fiber optics and will emit super-fast wireless internet.
Jon Salisbury, co-founder of Nexigen, said that “the smartLINK node MyLo allows for Newport to be one of the top Smart Cities projects in the country with the first fully self-funded smart city model in existence”.
This wireless internet will provide WIFI analytics service, delivering data access to a multitude of devices while providing maximum measurement with analytics.
A separate wireless canopy technology is going to be deployed which will extend low power WAN or LPWAN signals from 30 to 300 miles from a single access point allowing for the progress of parking sensors and more.
“The City of Newport is proud to be honored for the leading role it has taken in bringing Smart City technology to our residents, visitors, and businesses,” said Newport Mayor Jerry Peluso. “This is just another example of how the city works in partnership with the business community to bring innovative services to Newport, enhancing our reputation as a great place to live, work, play and visit.”
The award was announced earlier this month by IDG Enterprise, a leading enterprise technology media company that includes the brands CIO and Computerworld.
Entries were judged by a premier panel of IT and business executives on a number of criteria, including complexity and innovation. Only those organizations with highly significant projects, impressive business results and superior collaboration among stakeholders made the list.
Award recipients will be honored at the AGENDA17 conference in March. For more information on the 2017 Digital 50 Awards, click here .
“Organizations are finding dramatic results from the cloud, and serving customers in faster and more elegant ways,” McCrory said. “Their adoption of agile, extreme programming and completely reworked business processes show how even the most traditional businesses can go big with digital with the right vision and leadership.”
“The smartLink node MyLo allows the city and businesses to engage and connect users through smart technologies that streamline the efficiency of services that residents and visitors want and need and the data that businesses can us to better serve their customers,” said smartLINK co-founder Russ Middleton.
The City of Newport
