Smart Cities Technology and Data

Nearly 350 cities worldwide can now access Google's free Tree Canopy tool, which maps urban tree cover, the tech company announced in a blog post March 29. Previously available in 14 cities, the tool now covers cities including Atlanta and Baltimore.

The tool aims to help cities “understand their current tree coverage and better plan urban forestry initiatives,” according to Google’s blog post. The company plans to expand the tool to thousands more cities this year.

Trees bring city dwellers a slew of benefits: They absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide, can improve people’s mental health, provide shade and cool the surrounding air. But the benefits are not distributed equitably, with lower-income areas often having less tree cover and hotter average temperatures.

Google’s Tree Canopy tool is built with the same underlying information it uses for Google Maps, using machine learning and aerial imagery to estimate how dense a neighborhood's tree cover is. First launched in 2020, Tree Canopy is one of a suite of tools available through the tech giant’s Environmental Insights Explorer, which also provides estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and solar energy potential of buildings in a region. 

“By surfacing environmental information in a robust platform free of charge, we aim to serve decision makers and researchers working on these issues and solutions for cities globally,” Google said. 

Lessons from early adopters

Leaders from Austin, Texas, and Chicago, among the first cities to use the tool, say they found Google’s tree canopy data to be mostly accurate.

The data aligns with information Austin collected itself, said Marc Coudert, the city’s climate resilience and adaptation manager, in an interview. “Satellite data is hard to refute because we notice familiar objects, and we can sort of understand that it's real.”

According to Google, Tree Canopy may not match up with a city’s data due to factors such as the date the aerial imagery was taken, different versions of city boundaries and errors by the company’s machine learning system. 

Austin and Chicago have found the tool most effective to empower and engage community members by connecting them with easily accessible, understandable data, leaders from those cities said.

In Chicago, Tree Canopy helps community “tree ambassadors” focus outreach efforts and quickly identify where they can most productively request trees on behalf of residents, said Raed Mansour, director of environmental innovation at the Chicago Department of Public Health, in an interview. Google’s downloadable tree canopy data can also help community organizations develop programming or apply for grants, he said. 

“If you’re not connecting it to community members, then it’s not a very useful tool,” Austin’s Coudert said. He added that cities should complement the tool with additional sensors in communities to track heat, humidity and air quality.

Coudert advises cities to use the tool as “a public discussion point” while also doing their due diligence to better understand climate change’s health impacts in low-income communities. 

“It's a wonderful tool, but it's not the only tool,” he said.

As tech improves, so can urban tree efforts

A tool like Tree Canopy can be useful for cities to understand how trees are spatially distributed, but it’s not as detailed as a tree inventory, said Jacob Napieralski, a geology professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, in an interview. 

A tree inventory includes granular data about each tree, such as its age and species, which can be useful for cities considering species diversity and which trees to plant in the face of climate change, he said. However, tree inventories are often expensive, time-consuming endeavors that require “systematically going through boots on the ground,” Napieralski said. 

New technologies could change how cities obtain information about trees, he said, suggesting they could crowd-source the information through apps that allow users to discover a tree’s species by scanning a leaf. As technologies further improve, cities increasingly will be able to maintain up-to-date information about their trees, he said. 

Tools that allow cities to understand and address tree-related issues should be as common as those that allow them to identify and fix potholes in the road, Napieralski said. “We should have that same sort of responsiveness to trees.”

5G wireless connectivity and other smart cities-related technologies may soon deliver on their promises as technology companies, local governments and others develop new uses and business cases for them, panelists said during a discussion on Thursday at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.

The panelists predicted that over the next decade, technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, satellite communications and others would converge and integrate to offer a wide range of new services and capabilities that could help improve road safety, reduce traffic congestion, lower pollution, boost access to education and more.

“The blend of communications and AI ways of processing is going to be increasingly important,” said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager of cellular modems and infrastructure at Qualcomm Technologies. “That will be the standard expectation 10 years from now.”

Although telecommunications companies began to roll out 5G in 2019, most uses for the technology have improved existing applications for smartphones and other devices, Malladi said. But that’s changing as the technology matures and more devices and systems use 5G wireless connectivity, he added.

When 5G technology emerged, it promised to improve public safety, traffic management, energy efficiency and more by allowing state and local governments to transfer and process large amounts of data in real time. But until recently, many 5G connections offered similar speeds to 4G LTE or operated over very short distances, limiting their impact. That’s starting to change as telecommunications companies continue to expand their 5G networks and people develop new ways to use it, Malladi said. 

Derek Peterson, chief technology officer at Boingo Wireless, agreed, saying that the ultimate goal is to “have connectivity everywhere” that works seamlessly regardless of which technologies enable it. 

Aruna Anand, president and CEO of Continental’s Automotive group sector in North America, added that greater connectivity would likely reduce motor vehicle crashes through improved active safety systems that combine onboard vehicle data from sensors “with safety-related information coming over the air.”

She noted that edge computing would continue to play an important role in intelligent transportation systems, even though 5G connectivity provides fast communications, as data transfer and storage could be too expensive for applications that use a lot of data, such as for connected and automated vehicles.

Automakers and public officials are among those who hope that connected vehicle technology can help address an upward trend in traffic deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday estimated that nearly 32,000 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes during the first nine months of 2022 — about the same as last year.

Loud vehicles with modified exhaust systems meeting up at downtown intersections or speeding down city streets late at night are an increasing source of resident complaints in some communities. Many jurisdictions have laws against loud cars, trucks, and motorcycles, but identifying and catching violators has been challenging. Noise cameras promise to make that process simpler. However, the politics and laws surrounding noise cameras can be complex.

One supplier of the devices is the Southampton, UK-based Intelligent Instruments, which makes and sells the SoundVue system. The $27,000 device (plus software licensing fees), roughly the size of a large suitcase, attaches to a light pole and can be easily moved from location to location, the company says. Reuben Peckham, a director at Intelligent Instruments, said London has about a dozen of its devices installed, and the company has received inquiries from more than 30 U.S. cities.

Carter Hall, policy and business innovation manager for Knoxville, Tennessee, said his city has one noise camera downtown that gathers data about the scope of the vehicular noise problem. “We think of it more as a kind of engineering survey tool, the way that you would [study] traffic patterns, but to understand noise violation,” Hall said. A local news report from July 2022 said that about 1,300 cars had triggered the camera in roughly the first six months of operation.  

 “At the time, there were only two other cities in the world that were using these cameras: London and then New York,” Hall said. 

For Knoxville, issuing tickets for noise violations would be complicated, Hall said, and would need to start with action by the Tennessee state legislature. “We don't do vehicle inspections here, where some states do their muffler checking, so that's not a tool available to us.” Hall said police can issue noise citations for excessive noise at parties using body camera evidence and wondered if there were a way to apply that to vehicles, noting that it might require new or amended legislation.

“A lot of times when I talk to [other] cities, I used to just be allowed to talk about the camera and the technology,” Hall said. “But now, a lot of my conversations now are about how do you think about your city codes and your ordinances so that you can actually enforce things. You know, you’ve got to have a legal framework that lets you do these important things.”

New York addressed the problem in 2021 when the state enacted the SLEEP Act, which increased penalties for driving or selling vehicles with altered exhaust systems to $1,000. Mechanics who make the alterations can lose their state licenses to perform inspections. 

New York City appears to be the only U.S. city issuing citations for vehicle noise complaints captured by a noise camera. Its one device has been moved to five different locations since its deployment in mid-2021. Douglas Auer, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, says it has issued 71 citations since then and expects to deploy a second camera this month.

“The noise camera is equipped with a high-definition camera and audio sensor that are triggered by cars and other vehicles that exceed pre-defined noise limits,” Auer said. “The sound meter and camera are installed adjacent to the roadway and are activated when they detect a noise at a distance of 50 feet or more that registers at or above 85 dBA.” He said inspectors and supervisors screen each video before DEP issues a citation.

The citations — $800 for a first offense, rising to $2,500 for a third offense — are civil penalties. They trigger administrative hearings and do not put the driver’s license or registration at risk. The city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings records show that few of the cited drivers appear for a hearing, and many citations have gone unpaid.

SLEEP Act sponsor Sen. Andrew Gournades said he would introduce a bill this year that would authorize noise cameras statewide. “The solution here is to strengthen enforcement and strengthen penalties, but also shift to an automated enforcement model, which we know is more objective, more fair, and takes law enforcement directly out of their responsibility,” Gournades said.

In Knoxville, “from the outset, we were very clear that the noise camera is not a silver bullet for us,” Hall said. “It's just a way to gain information. But I am hopeful that pretty soon we will be able to implement some things that will get us closer to mitigation and enforcement going hand in hand.”

The Orlando Economic Partnership this week unveiled the digital twin of the metro region that it built this year with interactive content developer Unity.

OEP — a nonprofit economic and community development organization — says the 3D technology maps 800 square miles, with 40 square miles recreated in “high fidelity.” It says it’s the first large regional digital twin in use by an economic development organization.

The goal was to establish a tool that can showcase the area and pull in real-time data to inform public- or private-sector decisions on infrastructure, utilities and business development.

The physical display of the digital twin is currently housed at the organization’s headquarters in downtown Orlando. Unity, which is largely known for video game development, also made a virtual reality experience that allows users to “go into the digital twin,” said OEP CEO Tim Giuliani, or feel as if they’re inside the city. The organization could take those VR headsets to trade shows or whenever it goes out to market to companies, he said.

For the next phase of the digital twin, OEP will seek to make the product more digitally accessible in 2023 and add partners — potentially development companies, commercial brokers, utilities or master planners — that could help fund the product and build out its functionalities and use cases, Giuliani said. 

The tool could ultimately generate revenue for the partnership, he said. An OEP spokesperson said that, to date, spending on hardware and software exceeded $1 million, “plus dozens of hours planning, implementing and testing.”

“Using it for marketing purposes is the easiest, fastest way to see value out of the digital twin. Where I want to see it get to next year in that second phase is adding in real-time data,” whether that’s connecting it to sensors, traffic data or real estate listings, “so that it goes from sort of a digital representation to something that's updated in real time,” Giuliani said. A future phase will hopefully see it run scenarios and have some predictive qualities, he added.

Giuliani said the partnership has been in talks with the city of Orlando, which has a history of engaging on the smart cities concept and created its own “future-ready” master plan. OEP and elected officials have touted Orlando as “the MetaCenter of the Metaverse,” which Giuliani said is a nod to the area’s tech workforces.

Giuliani identified potential timely use cases where the digital twin could help. He pointed to an upcoming referendum on transportation infrastructure in Orange County that, if passed, would prompt rail line expansion planning. The same goes for master planning for nearby airports.

Additionally, the recent hurricane required monitoring lake levels to identify where storm drains were getting clogged and dispatch help to address the issue. In the future, sensors in the stormwater system could potentially be connected to the digital twin as a command center. “Is that something that's going to happen in six months? Probably not. But it’s totally within the capability set up in the digital twin,” he said.

“So those conversations are beginning now, but we really had to have the digital twin open and operational so that people can come in and see it and understand it,” Giuliani said. “It was too abstract to talk about it. They really have to see it to understand its capabilities and how it can be used for their own benefit.”

From Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Seoul, South Korea, to Santa Monica, California, a growing number of cities worldwide are exploring how they can deploy metaverse technology to more effectively administer public services, engage residents, and boost activity with businesses or downtown areas.

Last year, “nobody was talking about the metaverse. Now, I can’t go a day without a conversation about it,” said Steve Zoegall, industry lead for global cities, transport and critical infrastructure with Accenture, and a fellow with the World Economic Forum. 

The metaverse is an immersive virtual world in which people don’t just look at what’s online, but interact virtually to engage in many of the activities they do in the physical world, such as socialize, take classes, make purchases, and even travel. In Facebook’s buzzy rebrand to Meta, the company’s stated mission remains one of bringing people together — some city leaders might say the same about metaverse initiatives.

The technology is in the “novelty and strategy phase,” Zoegall said. For some cities, metaverse technology remains a novelty, while others are actively evaluating it and identifying goals.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government in late 2021 announced its intent to “establish a metaverse platform … to start providing a new-concept public service,” as part of its Five-year Metaverse Seoul Promotion Master Plan. The city stated that the platform will “create a metaverse ecosystem for all areas of its municipal administration,” including economic, cultural, tourism, educational and civic service.  

For instance, starting in 2023, the Seoul Lantern Festival and other events will be held in the metaverse so they’re available around the world. The city stated it will also use the platform to develop services for the socially vulnerable, including safety and convenience content for people with disabilities, and it will expand the platform to all areas of municipal administration to boost efficiency.

Dubai announced its own metaverse strategy last month, which aims to turn the city into “one of the world’s top ten metaverse economies” and “a global hub for the metaverse community.” The strategy also aims to foster innovation, attract new companies to Dubai, support metaverse education and apply Web3 technology to create new governmental work models.

Modeling cities, supporting businesses and more

Cities with less ambitious plans can also utilize the technology in different ways. The pandemic demonstrated the importance of having easy ways to share information with citizens, whether informing about a public health crisis or the date of the next farmer’s market, says Lena Geraghty, director of sustainability and innovation with the National League of Cities. 

“By moving into the metaverse, information becomes even more interactive and feels more personalized, so end users are better able to receive it” she said.  

Today's metaverse initiatives often draw on and bring together technologies that have been in place for a while. For instance, several years ago, the Boston Planning Department created a digital twin, or virtual replica, of the city. Previously, city planners had used wooden models to help them design the city’s future and show residents the impact of infrastructure changes before they occur. However, the models were labor-intensive and couldn’t simulate the impact of sun or wind, according to Esri, a provider of geographic information software that worked with the city on its digital twin.

The city of Los Angeles created a virtual model of its Sixth Street Viaduct bridge, which it replaced and opened to the public this summer, to help “generate excitement” for the project, said Michael Zyda, professor of engineering practice at the University of Southern California.

Metaverse technology could streamline approvals for residents’ building and renovation projects, said Zyda. For instance, in a situation when a resident needs approval to install a new roof, “If a resident could first create the new roof in the metaverse, that might make [the process] easier,” Zyda said.

Cities could also use metaverse deployments to boost interest in physical businesses. The city of Santa Monica is partnering with FlickPlay to launch a play-to-earn metaverse app. Users of the app in the city’s downtown can unlock digital collectibles and rewards and then redeem physical items at local retailers.

Furthering inequities?

Despite the potential benefits for cities, some experts say the deployment of metaverse technology could leave some residents behind. “If not properly planned, the metaverse can further exacerbate inequities,” said Hemant Desai, chief information officer with the International City/County Management Association. For example, virtual reality headsets, which enable users to fully experience the metaverse, can cost hundreds of dollars.

This concern will be especially pronounced in cities where a substantial minority of residents aren’t online. “If you’re 95% connected, you can tackle the other 5%,” Desai said. That becomes harder in cities in which only 70% or 80% of residents are connected. Intentional collaboration between residents and city leaders, along with public-private partnerships could start to address this challenge, he added.

City leaders also can engage the community to identify how they see the metaverse impacting them. “Make sure it will be useful and usable by people with different abilities and circumstances,” Geraghty said. 

Some cities are planning metaverse initiative implementation periods of five to seven years, Desai said. Taking a phased approach by, for instance, conducting a pilot and gathering and reviewing feedback before moving forward with a major launch can reduce the risk that an initiative excludes some residents, he added. 

Even cities that aren’t actively planning for or implementing metaverse technology will want to get up to speed on it, Geraghty said. “Push past the buzzwords to better understand what the technology can bring to bear” on city services, she said.

Amid the bright lights and multicolored electronic signs throughout the Las Vegas Strip, the white boxes installed atop street and traffic lights often go unnoticed by the millions of people who visit the city each year. 

The boxes transmit data about the status of traffic signals, the presence of emergency vehicles and other road hazards to autonomous vehicles. Connectivity between AVs and the infrastructure, as well as other road users, will be essential to improving traffic safety, according to autonomous vehicle experts.

The city known for casinos, entertainment and world-famous trade shows began planning a smart city strategy as early as 2017. Leading the charge is Michael Sherwood, chief innovation and technology officer for the city of Las Vegas. “Being able to improve outcomes for the community was our key driving factor,” Sherwood said. “Technology can [be] and is a game changer, allowing us to do more with less.”

The sensors and transmitters that send “signalized intersection data to autonomous vehicles” also give signal priority to emergency response vehicles, Sherwood said.

A number of companies are eying Las Vegas to host commercial robotaxi services this year, including Uber and Lyft in partnership with Motional. On a bus tour led by Qualcomm during the CES technology show this month, data from those transmitters could be seen overlaid on a tablet-based map application as the vehicle moved along Las Vegas streets. 

“Las Vegas is kind of cutting edge in the U.S. in that they've already made the investment to install these roadside units,” said a Qualcomm executive leading the tour. The benefits, he explained, include providing “non-line-of-sight information” to an autonomous vehicle. 

Someday, cars may communicate directly with each other. But in the near term, “Infrastructure is more important because the fleet penetration of [vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity] will be low to start,” the Qualcomm executive said.

Thomas Coughlin, president-elect of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, said during an interview at CES that infrastructure-to-vehicle communication would be important to developing fully autonomous vehicles and better driver assistance systems but noted that “we need standards” so all vehicles and roadside devices can effectively communicate.

What’s holding that back right now is the Federal Communications Commission. In 2020, the FCC moved to reallocate spectrum that had been reserved since 1999 for vehicle communication over the objections of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The FCC has yet to issue final rules on the use of new vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure communications using cellular technology but is expected to issue waivers this year for such uses. In a Dec. 13, 2022, statement issued by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and eight other organizations, the groups said “the waivers under consideration at the FCC are urgently needed to move forward with deployment plans.”

Eventually, this new technology will supplant the outdated Dedicated Short Range Communications technology. According to Sherwood, the roadside transmitters now use dual radio frequencies, both DSRC and 5G cellular. 

With funding from the state and the federal government, Las Vegas established its first private 5G network, Sherwood said, adding that because the city is home to CES, a number of companies have also invested in showcasing their technology here. Building on that earlier project, in September 2021, the city contracted with IT infrastructure company NTT to build out the largest private 5G network in the U.S. 

“We're continuing to put cameras at intersections throughout the downtown region,” Sherwood said. Better connectivity and analytics “will help us with autonomous vehicles” by providing better connectivity and data, Sherwood noted.

Among the projects Las Vegas has already undertaken includes using cameras and lidar to monitor 10 city parks, increasing public safety and reducing personnel needs, Sherwood said. Another program involves identifying wrong-way driving on downtown streets. Sherwood explained that identifying when and how many vehicles wrongly enter a one-way street provides better traffic management information than relying on accident reports because most incursions do not result in collisions. 

Sherwood added, “Most of what you'll see in 2023 from us is going to be geared on the safety side.”

When Shreveport, Louisiana, hired Keith Hanson as its chief technology officer and smart cities director in 2019, the city’s mayor asked him to address the digital divide and create a smarter city. Both efforts would require expanding broadband internet, making it one of Hanson’s earliest priorities.

Once he took the helm of Shreveport’s IT department, Hanson said he tried to understand the city’s digital infrastructure and internet access. He was initially stumped by the city’s digital divide: There was broadband infrastructure near almost every home, but many people seemingly lacked internet access. 

To understand the scope of the problem and create a map of internet coverage, Hanson’s team installed Raspberry Pi computers on the city’s garbage trucks and used location data to identify WiFi networks in the city. They soon made a startling discovery: About 40% of Shreveport had no WiFi coverage, and nearly all the dead spots were in historically underserved communities, Hanson said.

“This [was] a massive divide,” Hanson said.

Hanson began meeting with telecommunications companies in 2020 to figure out how to extend internet service to communities where it was lacking and get the broadband service Shreveport needed for its smart city infrastructure. Near the end of a promising meeting, Hanson asked when Shreveport would get 5G wireless connectivity and was told the city was low-priority for 5G deployments.

At that point, Hanson realized that the city would need to address its digital divide on its own. Large telecom companies often don’t invest in poorer communities like Shreveport, he said, where about 1 in 4 people live below the federal poverty line. 

“They’re still in this to go where the money is,” Hanson said, whereas the city primarily wants to invest in areas that don’t have enough internet access.

Although the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program offers financial assistance to help low-income households buy internet service from traditional providers, many eligible households don’t sign up for it because it’s too difficult to navigate, Hanson said. The program also doesn’t cover related expenses like internal wiring fees, which cost about $200 and are necessary to install broadband internet services in the older homes that many lower-income people live in, he said. According to the FCC, the ACP program only provides monthly discounts for internet service and a one-time deal to buy a laptop computer, desktop computer or tablet.

The city turned to its residents for help, asking voters to approve $22 million in bonds to install fiber-optic cables for additional broadband service and other technologies to upgrade its water, sewer and traffic control systems. But the ballot measure failed last December, dealing a blow to Hanson’s plans. 

Turning to blockchain

The city’s IT department decided to explore building a public WiFi network with existing resources and infrastructure. That decision eventually led to a conversation between Hanson and Winston Lazar, founder and CEO of Spread Networks, a company that helps local governments, utilities and other organizations use open standard-based technologies for their digital infrastructure.

Lazar initially recommended that the city build a public WiFi network using Helium, a decentralized wireless IoT network that allows people to earn a cryptocurrency called HNT if they install specialized WiFi hotspots in their homes and businesses. However, Lazar and Hanson soon realized that a similar service, Pollen Mobile, would allow the local government to blast WiFi service throughout the city more effectively by using directional antennas. 

If Shreveport hadn’t switched to Pollen Mobile for WiFi, “some of our best tower and roof locations would have put half our radio's power into the lake instead of into a home,” Hanson said. 

Earlier this year, Shreveport set up a system with Pollen Mobile, which uses Citizens Broadband Radio Service — a band of the radio-frequency spectrum — to create a private 5G network for public WiFi. The city also uses Helium’s low-power wide-area network for smart city applications that require long-range communications. Implementation was quick, Hanson said, because the city built its network using open standards — a feat that would not have been possible with a traditional vendor using proprietary technology, he added.  

The public library steps in

The Shreveport IT department and Spread Networks still needed a broadband connection, places to install equipment and a way to make the public aware that the WiFi service was available. That led to a partnership with Shreveport’s public library system, which already had high-speed internet service, filters to safeguard the public against unwanted content, physical locations in underserved communities and strong community relationships, Hanson said.

John Tuggle, executive director at Shreve Memorial Library in Shreveport, said libraries have tried to address the digital divide since the 1990s, but when Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins asked about providing internet access to children outside of libraries, he had little to offer. 

“As a profession, librarians have had a hard time imagining getting outside of our buildings to provide internet access,” Tuggle said.

Tuggle said he was excited when Hanson and Lazar talked to him about using the library to build a public WiFi network. It was an opportunity for him and his colleagues to help their communities develop the digital skills they need to thrive, he said.

“Our economy has changed tremendously over the last 25 years,” Tuggle said. “It's really to the point where internet access … is needed just to be able to survive.”

At the direction of Shreveport’s IT department, Spread Networks installed the equipment necessary to operate the WiFi network at libraries in five communities, with each installation reaching up to 1,000 homes. Residents with a library card who live in the coverage area can access the network by picking up and installing a hot spot kit from their local library.

Promising results

While the program only recently took effect, the early returns appear promising, Tuggle said, noting that “it’s wonderful” to see so many residents excited to have greater internet access.

The approach was far less costly than Shreveport’s other options, Hanson said, with the city spending about $500,000 in American Rescue Plan funds on its public WiFi network. If it had partnered with a traditional internet service provider, Shreveport would have spent at least $5 million to reach the same number of homes, he said.

In addition to the cost savings, using an open standard like blockchain allowed Shreveport to build a customized solution without the need for a “master plan” because it’s interoperable, Spread Networks’ Lazar said, which means that it can work with an endless number of custom or readily available products and services. Moreover, because Shreveport owns all the infrastructure, the city can use, change and expand the network without asking vendors for permission or paying additional fees. 

In addition to not having to deal with a dizzying array of proprietary and often incompatible technologies, using open technologies and platforms gives public officials far more control over their digital infrastructure, Hanson said, by providing them with “ultimate choice.”

“There is no artificial lock-in anymore,” he said.

Spread Networks, which operates the network for Shreveport, holds all the cryptocurrency the network creates to alleviate any crypto-related legal or financial risks the city could face, Hanson said.

“Nobody had the appetite for that,” he said.

The goal was to build a network that the city could use for public WiFi and smart city projects like a video camera system that aims to deter crime, Hanson said — cryptocurrency and blockchain technology are just part of making it work. The crypto tokens also provide an additional financial incentive for Spread Networks and similar vendors to succeed, he said. 

“It's not just a service contract anymore,” Hanson said.

At the end of the day, improving internet access is the most important aspect of the project, he said. 

“It doesn’t matter what technology you use,” Hanson said. “Lower the barrier, and make it as easy as [using] a library card to adopt it.”

What if a city could help stop homelessness before it happened? Some cities are using predictive analytics and other strategies to identify residents who are at risk.

Ensuring residents stay in their homes can preempt what’s often a traumatic experience. Armed with data, social service agencies can reach out to residents to offer financial assistance or connect them with other resources. In doing so, cities can also potentially reduce costs associated with homelessness, such as the expense of building and operating shelters. Taxpayers spend $30,000 to $50,000 annually to cover the costs of one homeless person, according to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.

“Without connections to the right types of care, [people experiencing homelessness] cycle in and out of hospital emergency departments and inpatient beds, detox programs, jails, prisons, and psychiatric institutions — all at high public expense,” the council said in a brief on supportive housing.

Although homelessness prevention makes financial and humanitarian sense, research in this area is limited, said Janey Rountree, executive director of the California Policy Lab, a nonpartisan organization focused on public policy research.

Each year, Los Angeles County provides 2 million single adult county residents with housing, health and emergency services, and about 2% of those receiving assistance become homeless, according to CPL. But it has been difficult to know who is on that trajectory, Rountree says. 

Predictive analytics can help identify at-risk individuals. Of the approximately 80,000 stably-housed, single adults and family heads of household who are eligible for services that the county’s Homelessness Prevention Unit provides, the prevalence of homelessness is about 5%. Based on CPL’s models, 30% of those on the high-risk list and who are referred to HPU will become homeless, Rountree says.

For HPU clients who are identified as high-risk, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services provides single adult participants with either $4,000 or $6,000 in financial assistance, and family participants are offered either $5,000 or $7,000. Of the 54 clients in the initial HPU pilot, 90% self-reported that they kept their housing, Rountree says.

Spikes in service use and greater use of multiple services from a single agency, among other information, signaled a higher risk of users becoming homeless.

These results show that “a data approach was more accurate than relying on human workers to identify those most at risk of homelessness,” Rountree said. That’s mainly because computer models can process far more information than people.

While completing research for his master’s degree, Colin Middleton, a data scientist at the consultancy Gordian Data, worked with a local utility company to study whether anonymized utility billing data was a useful proxy for individuals’ financial status. His model linked that utility data with information provided by the city of Spokane, Washington, on the use of shelters and assistance programs. It predicted with nearly 75% accuracy those who would eventually experience homelessness.

While the results were a solid start, the model’s accuracy could be better, Middleton said. He noted the data wasn’t “super-rich” and likely not a comprehensive representation of people’s financial status. For instance, he couldn’t determine if an individual was receiving financial assistance.

Using predictive analytics to prevent homelessness requires some investment. Cities can buy a pre-built model and hire someone trained to run it, or they can hire someone to build and run a custom model, Middleton said.

Cities also need access to relevant data about residents’ financial and health status and policies to safeguard privacy. After CPL uses de-identified data to determine which residents are at risk, they send the information to the county, which has tools to protect the data when it re-identifies the individuals, Rountree said.

Public support can also be a roadblock. Taxpayers may point to the assistance already available in many cities and ask why those who need help don’t use it, said Priyank Arora, an assistant professor in the management science department at the University of South Carolina’s business school. Many people don’t understand how much time it takes to seek help, which can be particularly difficult for those working multiple jobs. Predictive analytics present an opportunity for cities to connect with people who might find it difficult to reach out themselves, Arora said.

“When we want to help folks in distress, there’s always limited resources,” he said. Predictive analytics enables cities to intervene before people lose their housing and to use their resources more effectively, Arora added.