Kenosha News: Longtime Gateway instructor a winner in Foxconn Smart Cities competition
Gateway Technical College Horticulture instructor Kate Field has been named as one of the 12 winners in the final round of Foxconn’s statewide Smart Cities-Smart Futures competition.
Field, who retired earlier this month, was the only winner among the state’s technical colleges, surviving all three rounds of the Smart Cities competition which began with 355 initial applicants in Round One from two- and four-year institutions from across Wisconsin. She was announced as a winner at aThursday celebration.
“This has been an exciting process,” said Field. “It proves that you can take a really big idea — maybe even an outlandish idea — that you believe in and make it a success.
“ It shows that there will be people who share that vision with you and are willing to help you to make it a reality. It’s a pinnacle to my career.”
Field’s Food Category entry calls for using hydroponics to grow clean, fresh local food in urban areas using rooftop greenhouses and precision farming in abandoned or underused buildings. Included in the final proposal were specifics on Racine sites.
Gateway had two entries competing in this final round. In addition to Field, Gateway instructor Donald Heckel, an Architectural-Structural Engineering Technician student, and Gateway Civil Engineering instructor Steve Whitmoyer collaborated on an entry in the Mobility and Transportation Category.
The entry outlines a Tier Modal system for Racine County which would be unique to the Midwest. Heckel also owns and operates Third Coast Bicycles in Racine.
Foxconn’s Smart Cities-Smart Futures competition asked students, faculty and staff from Wisconsin’s higher education institutions to submit their innovative solutions for developing smart, connected cities.
Read the article in its original source here.
- Published in Blog, Smart Cities - Smart Futures
Foxconn Announces Final Round Winners of “Smart Cities-Smart Futures” Competition
Milwaukee, WI – Foxconn Technology Group (Foxconn) today announced the final-round winners of the first year of its “Smart Cities-Smart Futures” competition alongside its state and local partners. Dr. Alan Yeung, Foxconn Director of U.S. Strategic Initiatives, academic leaders, and competition partners recognized 12 outstanding ideas submitted by students, faculty, and staff representing Gateway Technical College, the Medical College of Wisconsin, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, and UW-Platteville.
The winners are:
– Hanwan Jiang & Team, UW-Platteville
– Bahareh Behzadnezhad & Team, UW-Madison
– Michelle Botts & Team, Medical College of Wisconsin
– Michael Schlicting & Team, UW-Madison
– Brandon Tefft & Team, Medical College of Wisconsin
– Jiatong Li & Team, UW-Madison
– Prof. Jeffrey Blessing, Ph.D., Milwaukee School of Engineering
– Fang Yang & Team, UW-Platteville
– Zak Sharif-Sidi & Team, Medical College of Wisconsin
– Jingjie Li & Team, UW-Madison
– Kate Field, Gateway Technical College
– Zihao Jin & Team, UW-Milwaukee
In May 2018, Foxconn pledged up to $1 million in cash and in-kind technical support over a three-year period to support innovative ideas that enhance quality of life, improve working environments, expand transportation networks, inspire creative city planning, and promote sustainable energy solutions. Submissions were evaluated by a group of fifty judges based on clarity, impact, marketability, and other criteria.
Final round competitors were required to write a 1,500-word essay and create a five-minute video explaining how their submission contributes to the vitality of smart communities. Ideas submitted for the competition covered the following categories: energy and the environment, mobility and transportation, education, e-health, software, the internet of things, smart homes, robotics and manufacturing, and big data analytics.
Twelve submissions were selected as third and final round winners from an initial pool of 325 first round applicants. Today’s winners received a $5,000 cash prize for a total of $7,000 in awards over the duration of the entire competition. Beginning last year at a ceremony at Carthage College, first round winners received $500, advancing to the second round where winners received $1,500.
“When we first announced the ‘Smart Cities-Smart Futures Competition, we were amazed at the amount of interest and the quality and creativity of the submissions. I want to congratulate our final round winners on their work, as well as all of the candidates who participated,” said Dr. Yeung. “The goal of this competition was to encourage innovation and critical thinking to help the people of Wisconsin, and I think we are achieving that. The work that resulted from the competition will pave way for developing technologies that will revolutionize how people live, work, and play.”
Foxconn has partnered with the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Wisconsin Technical College System on the “Smart Cities—Smart Futures” competition. In addition to the academic partners, the competition is also supported by several groups, including the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, the Wisconsin Technology Council, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, the WiSys Technology Foundation, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation.
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About Foxconn Technology Group
Established in 1974, Foxconn Technology Group (“Foxconn”), is the global leader in manufacturing services for the computer, communication, and consumer electronics (3C) industry. A multinational company headquartered in Taiwan, Foxconn offers many of the leading U.S. and international companies in electronics a one-stop integrated manufacturing solution. Foxconn generated total annual revenue of $158 billion in 2017 and was ranked No. 24 on the 2018 Fortune magazine Global 500. The company has facilities in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Foxconn is leveraging the potential of cloud computing, mobile devices, the Internet of Things, Big Data, artificial intelligence, networks, and robotics and automation, in its transformation as a leading high-tech enterprise and industrial Internet company. The company has research centers and testing laboratories internationally and has received more than 83,500 patents worldwide. In addition to maximizing value creation for customers, Foxconn is also dedicated to enhancing the concept of environmental sustainability in the manufacturing process and serving as a best-practices model for global enterprises.
- Published in Blog, Smart Cities - Smart Futures
Wisconsin News: Four UW-Madison student teams among final round “Smart Cities-Smart Futures” winners
Four UW–Madison teams are among the winners in the final round of Foxconn Technology Group’s inaugural “Smart Cities-Smart Futures” competition.
The competition promotes innovative ideas to enhance quality of life, improve working environments, expand transportation networks and living spaces, inspire creative city planning and promote sustainable energy solutions in Wisconsin. The contest was open to students, faculty, and staff at all University of Wisconsin campuses, technical colleges, and independent colleges in Wisconsin.
The UW–Madison recipients are:
- Bahareh Behzadnezhad and team proposed a Bluetooth wristband for patient identification and real-time location monitoring at healthcare facilities. This combined Bluetooth technology and IoT (Internet of things) approach improves patient safety and treatment, helps identify gaps in healthcare services and finds ways to improve the system.
- Michael Schlicting and team proposed a smart transportation hub which handles all forms of transportation, from bicycles, to autonomous cars, to hyperloops, and includes smart residential, office, and commercial space in and around the station.
- Jiatong Li and team proposed a big data-based system to predict the failure probability for civil engineering structures and artificial-intelligence-based diagnostic robots to further investigate and confirm the health of structures with failure probability above the alarming level.
- Jingjie Li and team proposed a privacy-preserving smart camera giving adjustable privacy levels to users data off-loaded to the cloud while maintaining good performance of smart city applications such as traffic control, healthcare, etc.
In May 2018, Foxconn pledged up to $1 million in cash and in-kind technical support over a three-year period to encourage the sharing of fresh ideas and unconventional thinking for the benefit of Wisconsin. The submitted proposals were evaluated by a group of 50 judges based on clarity, impact, marketability, and other criteria.
Final round competitors were required to write a 1,500-word essay and create a 5-minute video explaining how their submission contributes to the vitality of smart communities. Ideas submitted for the competition covered energy and the environment, mobility and transportation, education, e-health, software, the internet of things, smart homes, robotics and manufacturing, and big data analytics.
Final round winners were chosen from an initial pool of 325. The winners received a $5,000 cash prize, for a total of $7,000 in awards over the duration of the entire competition. Beginning last year at a ceremony at Carthage College, first round winners received $500, advancing to the second round where winners received $1,500.
Foxconn has partnered with the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Wisconsin Technical College System on the “Smart Cities—Smart Futures” competition. In addition to the academic partners, the competition is also supported by several groups, including the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, the Wisconsin Technology Council, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, the WiSys Technology Foundation, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation.
Read the article from original source here.
- Published in Blog, Smart Cities - Smart Futures
Journal Times: Transit app rolls to finals in Foxconn competition
A pair of local men have cleared the first two hurdles in Foxconn’s Smart Cities—Smart Futures competition to reach the final round with their conceptual transportation smartphone app.
Don Heckel, owner of 3rd Coast Bicycles, 401 Sixth St., and Steve Whitmoyer, who teaches civil engineering, the construction sciences and freshwater sciences at Gateway Technical College, at this point are 10-percenters in the Smart Cities contest. Of 325 ideas submitted, 88 survived the first cut. Then 30 second-round winners, with eight honorable mentions, were announced on March 13.
“My focus was: How do you get all these workers, in theory 13,000 people, without making traffic worse, to Foxconn’s campus?” Don Heckel, Smart Cities-Smart Futures finalist
Another Gateway instructor, Kate Field, also had her horticultural proposal selected as a second-round winner.
The Smart Cities—Smart Futures competition encourages members of Wisconsin’s higher education community to generate innovative ideas that enhance quality of life, improve working environments, expand transportation networks, inspire creative city planning and promote sustainable energy solutions in the state.
- Published in Blog, Smart Cities - Smart Futures
Journal Times: What is a ‘Smart City’ And how does the designation affect residents?
The City of Racine is moving forward with an initiative to become a “Smart City” with the help of the Smart Cities Council, but what does that mean? What exactly is a “Smart City”? Peggy James, University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s dean of social science and professional studies, said what may confuse people is that the term is fairly recent, but some of the technology is already incorporated into city infrastructures.
“It’s always very tempting to talk about smart cities 300 years from now, with flying vehicles, but some things are already here,” said James. “They’re smart but it’s not futuristic.”
“It’s going to happen; this isn’t just the newest flavor of the year. This is going to happen so doing it right now will be absolutely excellent for southeastern Wisconsin.” – Peggy James
One example she gave is LED street lights, which are more energy-efficient. Another program, being rolled out in Chicago, is sensors placed in trash bins that notify the city when a rat family has taken residence in a Dumpster so that city workers know to dispose of them. “It’s not really futuristic, it’s just being smart,” said James. “It’s using information to be responsive.”
Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave gave the example of a smart park, which collects data on what equipment is used and what people do while they are at a park. “If a certain type of swing is popular, you take that data and put that into other parks,” said Delagrave. Delagrave said that what’s key for county or city to become “smart” is investing in infrastructure so that more data are collected and processed to make government services more efficient. “Ultimately, what it’s really about is how can we better gather data, to be able to share that data and derive better outcomes from that data?” said Delagrave.
Jeff Robshaw, Gateway Technical College’s chief information officer, said those outcomes not only include efficiency but improving quality of life, particularly for the most vulnerable.
- Published in Blog, Smart Cities - Smart Futures
Smart Cities Council: Meet the 2019 Smart Cities Readiness Challenge winners
The Smart Cities Council has named the winners of its annual Smart Cities Readiness Challenge, honoring five communities across North American for ambitious smart cities visions that are impactful, collaborative, inclusive and sustainable.
The winning communities are: Baltimore; Edmonton; Montgomery; Racine, WI; and Cleantech San Diego. This was the third year for the annual competition in North America, which drew more than 100 applications. Thirty-six communities delivered substantial applications that were eligible for full consideration.
“Our 2019 Readiness Challenge was our best ever by several measures,” said Kevin Ebi, Director of the Smart Cities Council’s Readiness Program in North America. “Not only did we see record participation from communities, but the level of maturity demonstrated by them was nothing short of phenomenal.”
Read the full article here.
- Published in Blog, Smart Cities - Smart Futures
The Journal Times: Smart Cities Council picks Racine
The Smart Cities Council has chosen the City of Racine as one of the five winners of its Smart Cities Readiness Challenge, the council announced Tuesday.
As one of the winners, the city will have access to expertise and financing for projects “using technology and data-informed decisions to better deliver City services and create a more equitable community,” according to a city release.
In March, the Smart Cities Council announced that Racine was one of the 10 finalists in the Smart Cities Readiness Challenge. More than 100 cities across North America applied.
Read the full article here.
- Published in Blog, Smart Cities - Smart Futures
WisconsinINNO: AmFam Turns to Smart Home Devices to Help Customers Protect Their Home
American Family Insurance believes smart home products can help people better protect their home, and it’s partnering with a U.K. startup to bring new devices to its U.S. customers.
Madison-based American Family recently announced that it has partnered with Neos, a startup that launched in 2016 that makes smart home insurance products, such as internet-connected smoke detectors and water sensors that detect pipe leaks.
The partnership will allow American Family to offer its customers a line of smart home products that can help identify problems before they become worse. American Family said it will begin offering devices in a pilot program starting later this year for customers in Arizona and Washington. American Family said the partnership is the first of its kind for a U.S. insurer.
Specific details of the partnership are still being worked out—such as how much the devices will cost and what specific products customers will have access to, according to American Family Strategic Partnership Leader Andy Kearns. But he said it will likely begin with cameras, smart smoke and fire detectors, and water sensors.
“We are going to have devices in homes to help people be more secure and be safer,” he said. “Consumers really want to proactively protect their homes.”
- Published in Smart Cities - Smart Futures
Milwaukee Business Journal: Wisconsin’s Faith Technologies constructing $20M ‘smart building’ in the Fox Valley
Faith Technologies Inc., a Menasha-based electrical, engineering and technology systems company with a Milwaukee-area office in Pewaukee, is spending $20 million on a smart manufacturing building in the Fox Valley.
The company, which also has offices and facilities in Madison, Plover, La Crosse, Neenah, Oshkosh, Appleton, Peshtigo, Sheboygan and Green Bay, is constructing a 225,000-square-foot facility that will be “the first truly smart manufacturing building in Wisconsin,” said Scott Romenesko, president of Excellerate Manufacturing, a subsidiary of Faith Technologies, in a statement.
- Published in Smart Cities - Smart Futures
Governing: Can smart cities get smarter?
The Midwestern metropolis of Columbus, Ohio, is one of the fastest growing in the United States. Like leaders in much of urban America, officials in Columbus are looking for ways to handle the pressures that come with growth and demographic change. When Columbus applied in 2015 for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, the only iteration of the contest so far, its vision for what it might do with the $40 million grant involved, among other things, targeting an aging population; younger residents attracted to already dense neighborhoods; and access to transit and other forms of transportation.
Read more on the Smart City Challenge by the US Dept. of Transportation.
After winning the competition by besting 77 other municipalities facing similar challenges, Columbus could become a leader in the smart city movement, a growing effort to use high-tech solutions to solve urban problems. Part of Columbus’ task will be to serve as a model for other areas wanting to attain the promised benefits of advanced data analysis, artificial intelligence and algorithms by bringing them more directly into contact with every city function.
The smart city movement, while conceived of several years ago, is actually just getting underway, and participation is still very much an experiment. The term “smart city” has been in use since the early 1990s, but in the last decade — particularly since the financial crisis of 2008 led governments and businesses to seek greater efficiency at a reduced cost — the idea has begun to gain traction. Internationally, China, India and Singapore, in particular, have been pushing to upgrade their cities’ tech infrastructures.
- Published in Smart Cities - Smart Futures