 Smart Cities Connect Spring 2025: Driving Innovation in Urban Transformation The Smart Cities Connect Spring 2025 Conference & Expo was held in San Antonio, TX, from April 14–16, 2025 and convened with over 200 city leaders, technologists, and innovators to explore the future of urban development. Key Themes and Sessions:
As part of my personal view and attending sessions, here is my highlight! One of the first sessions I attended was listening to how Skydio uses UAS drones for high mass light tower inspection and is working with Texas Department of Transportation saving time from what took 95 minutes that is now whittled down to only 16 minutes. Skydio also mentioned we have moved to a 1:1 relationship for managing drones in cities to a 1 to many relationship where UAS docking and preprogramming is advancing drone operations within cities. Additional use cases are event driven including those for public safety, rail inspection, bridge inspection, and building management. Another session I enjoyed was listening to University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA, and my MBA alma mater) and the team share more about their digital twin research project for City of San Antonio. The digital twin was built using geospatial, AI, machine vision, large language models (ChatGPT), 3D visualization, and NVIDIA Omniverse. The team also mentioned using the electric utility network for distribution to showcase CPS Energy data and information. Some of the primary use cases for the city included heat island identification, flood monitoring, and in the future planning for EV charging infrastructure build out and predicting the overall impact to enterprise fleets. A highlight of the event for me was the workshop, "Immersive Experiences Driven by Intelligent Data for the Modern Urban Environment. Here is my summary of that workshop. How Smart City Leaders Are Powering the Future with Real-Time Data and Integrated Solutions This workshop event held at Smart Cities Connect focused on advancing smart city innovation, with a panel of industry leaders from NVIDIA, AMSYS Innovation Solutions, True North Software Solutions, and Ipsotek shared insights on how technology is reshaping urban infrastructure, public safety, and city services, and in the end citizen or patron experiences. Laying the Foundation for Smarter Cities Bill Pugh of True North Software Solutions kicked things off by outlining the key steps cities should take to begin their smart city journey. He emphasized the importance of leveraging operational dashboards and digital twins—not just to analyze historical data, but to harness real-time information. By doing so, cities can make critical, data-driven decisions that directly impact public safety, transportation, and municipal services. True North’s approach goes beyond the typical “reactive” data model. Their operational dashboards integrate live data streams, enabling secure dynamic decision-making that supports a range of city department and agency services in real time. Frisco, Texas: Scaling Innovation Across Departments Wade Medlock from the City of Frisco, Texas, shared how their SAFER initiative has grown far beyond its original scope. What began as a modest goal has evolved into a wide-reaching program supporting multiple city departments and agencies. Today, Frisco has roughly 85 applications running across its network—each playing a role in making the city more efficient, secure, and responsive to residents’ needs. Wade discussed how it is working with AMSYS and the rest of the partner team to elevate SAFER to the next level for the city. Smarter Surveillance with Intelligent Cameras Sean Grimm of Ipsotek brought attention to the capabilities of smart cameras—many of which are already deployed on city streets. Far from being limited to traffic monitoring, these cameras can now provide advanced insights into public safety and city operations. This tech represents a massive opportunity to extract more value from existing infrastructure. NVIDIA Blueprints in Action Jumbi Edulbehram of NVIDIA helped define AI for the audience and gave a great example (You had to be there!). In addition he shared how NVIDIA is working collaboratively with AMSYS and their partners to provide the blueprints so execution of these services for applications such as intelligent traffic management and public safety response become a reality and scale efficiently. Bringing It All Together with “The Collective” John Rohrer and Jacque Istok of AMSYS Innovative Solutions described their role as a master systems integrator, highlighting their collaboration with a network of trusted partners known as “The Collective.” Their mission: combine best-in-breed solutions to transform how cities function. They discussed how getting started with AMSYS is a conversation and mutual relationship in learning, collaborating, and bringing the right solutions to the table. From elevating campus experiences and improving patient care in hospitals to streamlining city services, their integrated approach is delivering powerful results. They shared examples of projects across a variety of industries and use cases. Final Thoughts - Smart Cities Should Work For You, Not To You: Traffic management has long been the flagship use case for smart city technology. But as IoT, artificial intelligence, and intelligent data systems evolve, the potential use cases are expanding rapidly. These technologies are now enabling new services and experiences that go far beyond simply managing congestion. The message from these industry leaders is clear: smart city solutions should empower communities, not overwhelm them. As cities continue to adopt cutting-edge technology, the focus must remain on practical, people-centered outcomes—solutions that work for the city, its workers, and its residents.
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Bill Pugh, a technologist and entrepreneur, discusses the importance of AI policy creation and violation tracking. He explains how his company, True North, uses distributed ledger technology to capture and secure data related to traffic incidents and other events. Pugh emphasizes the need for responsible data analysis and implementation to make data actionable for entities. He also highlights the significance of mentorship and networking in the tech industry, encouraging individuals to find mentors and build diverse networks. Bill shares his journey as an entrepreneur and the importance of ownership and accountability in business. And he tops it off by discussing the responsibility to invest in the future and engage across the generations.
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