New consortium of industry partners includes: AT&T, C Spire, Cisco, Fujitsu, Current by GE, iconectiv, Interdigital, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, Verizon

Community partners include: Austin, Texas; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Colorado Springs, Colo.; District of Columbia; Independence, Ore.; Kansas City, Mo.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Portland, Ore.; San Diego, Calif.; Virginia Beach, Va.; Denver, Co.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 16, 2019 – US Ignite and ATIS have completed phase-one development of the Smart Cities Data Exchange framework, a project started in September 2018 to create a blueprint for the secure and interoperable exchange of data beyond city operational boundaries.

More than ten community partners and nearly a dozen companies have joined the project working group. The consortium has defined its area of focus and created an implementation plan based on the scenario of exchanging community and economic development data, with an emphasis on datasets that contribute to measures of mobility and livability across a region.

Traditional data like municipal budgets and crime reports, as well as new data from sensors, vehicles, and IoT-enabled infrastructure have the power to improve decision-making processes related to housing, transit, and commercial development at the local level. However, for cities to benefit from this information, they need new data-driven tools to visualize development outcomes and effectively assess neighborhood impact.

Cities also need to be able to share data in an interoperable and secure way with other cities, adjacent communities, federal/state government agencies, trusted partners, citizens, and application developers.

The Smart Cities Data Exchange framework will detail the processes for: taking data from community development source systems (such as traffic sensor data and affordable housing stock), creating a pipeline for data transformation into a common open schema, merging data from across multiple communities, and serving data through APIs, discovery systems, and visualization tools.

“Data sharing is critical to solving problems that naturally extend beyond municipal boundaries,” said Nick Maynard, Chief Strategy Officer of US Ignite. “Whether communities are tackling issues around accessibility, commercial real estate development, or equitable transportation, the solutions all depend on knowing where the pain points lie, and what resources are available for use. Unfortunately, that information doesn’t reside in a single departmental database.”

“Smart cities will be defined in the near future as much by their digital infrastructure as their physical structures,” said Mike Nawrocki, ATIS Vice President – Technology and Solutions. “Only by unlocking the data available to them will communities be able to ensure equitable opportunities for economic growth and a higher quality of life for citizens.”

In addition to a framework with technical specifications and data sharing practices, the Smart Cities Data Exchange project team aims to produce a single, highly visual tool that will help communities explore and provide snapshots of development potential on a property-by-property basis based on zoning, development standards, infrastructure requirements, and funding options. Such a tool would enable communities to analyze land use scenarios in the context of building healthier neighborhoods, in terms of multimodal transportation, walkability, and ease of access to complementary services.

The Smart Cities Data Exchange project welcomes potential partners interested in supporting further development. For more information, visit Smart Cities Data Exchange.

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About ATIS
As a leading technology and solutions development organization, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) brings together the top global ICT companies to advance the industry’s business priorities. ATIS’ 150 member companies are currently working to address 5G, Smart Cities, robocall mitigation, artificial intelligence-enabled networks, distributed ledger/blockchain technology, cybersecurity, IoT, emergency services, quality of service, billing support, operations, and much more. These priorities follow a fast-track development lifecycle – from design and innovation through standards, specifications, requirements, business use cases, software toolkits, open source solutions, and interoperability testing.

ATIS is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). ATIS is the North American Organizational Partner for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a founding Partner of the oneM2M global initiative, a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), as well as a member of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL). For more information, visit www.atis.org. Follow ATIS on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

ATIS’ Smart Cities Initiative
Smart City planners and decision-makers are investing in a broad range of data management platform via partnerships with industry solution-providers and start-ups. ATIS recently made a major contribution toward advancing this work by developing a Data Sharing Framework for Smart Cities, building on the success of its Smart Cities Technology Roadmap published in 2017.

About US Ignite
US Ignite, Inc. is a non‐profit organization accelerating the smart city movement by guiding communities into the connected future, creating a path for private sector growth, and advancing technology research that’s at the heart of smart city development. Learn more. Follow US Ignite on Twitter and on LinkedIn.