San Diego is looking to startups to help make the city a little bit smarter. The city shared opportunities for five different smart city projects through Startup in Residence (STiR), a program that carries young companies through a 16-week residency and is intended to end in a contract.
San Diego is currently installing 3,200 sensors on its streetlights, as part of its $30 million smart city project. The five suggested projects take advantage of this technology. They include:
- The city is seeking a company to develop apps for the public that use information from its intelligent streetlight network. Some suggestions include an app that helps direct drivers to open parking spots, or notifies them of road closures and street hazards.
- San Diego is seeking a software system that would route information on sidewalk hazards, street vandalism and water pipe breaks to its Clean and Safe App. The idea is to identify issues using machine learning or image recognition, which would prompt a request for sidewalk cleanup.
- The city is looking for a solution that would use its streetlight network or other methods to monitor time-limit parking and colored curbs. The system would allow the city to keep track of changes that have been approved, and which ones have been installed without approval.
- A step away from smart streetlights, San Diego is looking for a startup to build a social network for its nonprofits. Specifically, the network should encourage collaboration between local nonprofits, give them a platform to share their mission, leadership team and best practices, and help nonprofits identify potential funding opportunities and board members.
- San Diego’s urban planners are looking for a system to analyze pedestrian, bike and scooter activity. The information will be used to determine best locations for bike lanes, and bicycle and scooter sharing locations.
This year’s residency will take place from Jan. 28 to May 17, 2019. The deadline to apply is Nov. 7. STiR, which originally started in San Francisco, has since expanded to a network of 26 different government entities, including San Diego.
