Smart Cities
A smart city leverages data intelligence to inform decisions and develop programs designed to improve the city's infrastructure and quality of life for its citizens. By investing our time and talent into building more smart cities, we also help increase economic opportunities and attract companies and talent to Alabama.
Focus Areas
There are several focus areas that help determine the readiness of turning a city into a smart city:
- Energy
- Mobility
- Water
- Waste Management
- Connectivity
- Governance
- Health and Safety
- Education
Through the innovative improvements of our power grid and growing deployment of our fiber infrastructure, we can offer technological solutions to help these focus areas grow stronger and become smarter within their cities.
Smart City Goals
Smart cities are designed to improve the overall well-being of a community while also opening doors to more economic growth. Goals include:
- Create jobs and attract business
- Improve police response time and reduce overall crime
- Engage both citizens and businesses
- Advance a city's mass transit options
- Build a more connected, resilient and secure grid infrastructure
- Leverage the connected grid to support statewide education and rural healthcare
- Understand and learn about homes of the future
Building a Smart City
A reliable grid is the foundation of any smart city. Both the communications network and the devices require reliable electricity to perform properly.
Assets required to support a reliable electric grid are needed for a strong communications network. Fiber can serve as backhaul for the technologies or for alternate networks that support the devices
Smart Cities Grants
Alabama is one of a few states to have two cities receive Smart Cities grants – Birmingham and Montgomery. We are using these cities to gain insights on the best ways to leverage our existing infrastructure to evaluate Smart City technologies for other areas of our state.
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