Smart Cities Alliance Projects

The Colorado Smart Cities Alliance’s city members already have countless Smart Cities-related projects underway, with nearly 100 new projects identified as opportunities for collaboration. Each project showcases the forward-thinking nature of the public sector leaders involved and the innovative private sector partners that are helping to bring these projects from vision to reality.

ACTIONABLE INNOVATION

Actionable Innovation is our tested, five-phase approach to smart cities investments. Through this model, we consider the need, viability and sustainability of potential projects. We also consider outcomes and the ability of a project to solve challenges regionally. As a result, we deploy projects that have a significantly higher chance of growing beyond the pilot.

Partner: Facilitate a Collaborative Partnership by aligning the challenges, capacity and priorities of a Government Partner with the data and technology capabilities of a Business Partner.
Explore: Bring Collaborative Partners together to explore creative, outcome-driven solutions to regional challenges.
Evaluate: Evaluate the viability, affordability and sustainability of potential solutions and select the best option.
Implement: Launch projects that have a high chance of success in the test phase and ability to scale regionally and across the state.
Scale: Expand projects that were successful in a pilot to other localities and regions across the state.

This page only highlights examples of the many projects we’re working to start, replicate, and scale. Check back here regularly to see the latest projects from our members and find opportunities to get engaged.

With funding from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, members of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance have access to this world-class resource to jointly develop new solutions to solve the most complex problems.

Automated Electric Snow Removal and Maintenance

One of the problems universal to Colorado Smart Cities Alliance’s public sector members is what to do about snow, and other necessary outdoor operations required to maintain public rights of way. Can these essential functions be optimized and streamlined to improve efficiency, therefore enhancing the experience of community members who utilize those spaces?

Snowbotix, a three-time Connected Colorado Challenge winner, and Smart Futures Lab cohort graduate, has an innovative solution to address this ongoing pain point. They have developed a self-driving electric robot designed to clear snow, and also address other outdoor maintenance needs, like mowing and foliage removal. Through collaboration with jurisdictions in Colorado, they have refined their technology to improve its usefulness and effectiveness.

The first Snowbotix autonomous robots were deployed at Arapahoe Libraries in Winter of 2024. The company is currently scoping additional deployments in the City of Greeley and City of Colorado Springs, proving the scalability of solutions like this across different use cases, geographies and micro-climates.

AI Driven Infrastructure and Asset Management

To ensure a resilient future in our cities, building and maintaining safe, sustainable infrastructure is essential for supporting growth and delivering exceptional service to residents. Communities in Colorado are perpetually seeking effective ways of monitoring critical infrastructure issues, like potholes and cracks, to proactively address these defects.

In 2022, the City of Greeley selected iris as a Connected Colorado Challenge winner for their Automated Road Patrol solution to enhance active mobility safety. This partnership led to the co-development and testing of a scalable solution for monitoring roadway assets using fleet vehicle-mounted sensors and creating work orders using the city’s existing public works portal, which resulted in a substantial drop in service calls for residents.

While the original project scope is still active, the technology has evolved to address several different needs in the community, including measuring Pavement Condition Index, and custom asset detection for things like shoes on power lines. iris’s solution for asset condition monitoring has also been replicated in the City of Centennial.

Revolutionizing Parking Management

In urban areas, parking often proves to be one of the most important needs yet causes the biggest headaches for city representatives responsible for managing these zones. As is the case with so many of the problems addressable through civic innovation, parking mismanagement can have a snowball effect, decreasing safety and increasing emissions.

As a digital infrastructure company, Alliance member Modii, wants to solve this challenge by integrating and digitizing curbside and off-street parking assets. Modii has deployed in the Colorado communities of Arvada, south Denver and Colorado Springs with parking studies and platforms for finding parking.

Watch the Video

Optimizing Commutes for Measurable Results

Using technology to connect people with smart transportation options for daily commuting is a no-brainer. By optimizing and incentivizing clean commuting, cities assist residents in developing new habits that set them up for long-term success, while resulting in impactful reductions in carbon emissions.

In order to encourage their employees to explore sustainable commute options like transit, biking and walking, the City of Westminster partnered with Commutrics to provide a one-stop shop that offers resources and rewards for using alternative transportation. What started as a short but successful pilot, evolved into a six-month program, and then scaled to a year-long comprehensive implementation. Implementing Commutrics as a custom Transportation Demand Management (TDM) platform was a low risk way for the city to see measurable results.

Commutrics has also been deployed in Denver and other communities in Colorado, demonstrating the usability and value of this tool. Commute optimization isn’t just about getting from point A to B faster—it’s about building greener, more livable cities.

Advanced Analytics for Intersection Usage

Sensors, like cameras, are often used to help monitor different infrastructure assets, like roads or airports. City departments of transportation use them to assess conditions on the road, monitor safety incidents or congestion, or for detecting events. However, humans are manually viewing cameras, which limits the number of sensors that can be viewed at one time and usually limits their usefulness to reactive measures (i.e. a crash occurs, 911 is called, camera is then viewed).

Smart Futures Lab cohort company GridMatrix takes those existing sensors and applies advanced analytics and AI to generate even more value out of existing investments with real-time and historical analysis. These insights help jurisdictions detect events they would have never seen, proactively determine safety issues (i.e. near misses), and generate new data they can use to better plan infrastructure. GridMatrix helps communities gain more value from investments they have already made.

GridMatrix has been deployed with two LiDAR sensors at the intersection of Speer Blvd. and Larimer St., which is a major transportation and pedestrian thoroughfare separating CU Denver’s downtown campus from the broader Auraria Campus. The GridMatrix analytics are being used to assess the anonymous LiDAR data and determine important information about how the intersection is being used, by what type of user (pedestrian, car, truck, bike), and monitor safety events, like near misses between pedestrians and vehicles.

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G)

Deployment

Boulder, Colorado

Thanks to the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, members the City of Boulder and Fermata Energy have deployed one of the nation’s first vehicle-to-building fast chargers in the real world. As a critical phase to enable true vehicle-to-grid (V2G) smart grid applications, where our vehicles can provide resilience, lower energy costs, and revolutionize our energy system, the technology is operating in the real world. In eleven months of successful usage, Boulder saved an average of almost $270 per month – or, approximately equal to the monthly payment for many popular EVs.

This represents the type of public-private partnership and technology innovation needed to tackle problems like climate change, resilience, and affordable housing just to name a few.

Research

The Colorado Smart Cities Alliance partnered with researchers at the University of Colorado Denver to explore key research questions surrounding the future of V2X EV charging, including the quantitative energy impacts and savings potential, as well as the qualitative and social factors impacting people’s willingness to accept V2X charging. One outcome has been a capstone project by Hilary Haskell for the School of Public Affairs, Master of Public Administration (MPA) program, which surveyed the willingness to opt in to bidirectional charging programs in support of V2G integration. The resulting assessment found that bidirectional charging programs may benefit from hourly charging compensation rates, in addition to many other findings outlined in the capstone report.

By leveraging research and findings from this research, we can begin to better understand the feasibility of utilizing V2X charging to improve sustainability and resiliency in our urban environments and beyond.

Mobility Evolution Initiative

New technology and partnership models are revolutionizing the way people and goods move around influenced by major trends like electrification, connectivity, automation, and new service models. These technologies are being tested all over the world, often in silos, and entire industries are looking for opportunities to scale what works to begin solving the complex issues facing our transportation system.

The Mobility Evolution Initiative aims to identify the technologies and partnerships ready for primetime by planning larger deployments across Denver South’s technology-centered corridor, which is anchored by light rail and plagued by issues surrounding the first and last mile.

Contributors—including the technical staff of Denver South’s member jurisdictions, the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, locally-based engineering firm AECOM, and a team of researchers from the University of Denver—produced the now publicly available Mobility Evolution Initiative StoryMap.

This unique visualization is a living document that summarizes the overall process, methodology, existing conditions, toolbox, and data analysis that underpins the region’s collective mobility planning process. It provides the data to make informed decisions about the future of mobility throughout the region, and it provides the tools to evaluate innovative technologies, projects, and partnerships that can benefit commuters and residents alike.

Across three cities, two counties, several metro districts, and multiple solutions providers, the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance is looking to evolve how transportation technology is deployed, starting right in our backyard.

Interactive StoryMap

Denver’s “Love My Air” Program

As one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities, Denver experiences significant construction and traffic congestion, worsening our air quality (AQ)—the 14th-worst among major US cities. Only 53% of residents realize the impacts of poor AQ, including that children are more susceptible to its effects, such as decreased lung function and missed days of school. While multiple factors influence exposure to air pollution, schools are an ideal intervention point for sensor deployment, education and empowerment.

The Love My Air program, in partnership with Denver Public Schools (DPS), is creating a citywide air quality (AQ) monitoring network to provide real-time AQ data—utilizing low-cost cutting-edge air pollution sensor technology, redeveloped with solar, battery storage and data connectivity to make it useful for widescale deployment and replicable in any municipality. The Love My Air program is also a Denver Smart City project.

AvCo, Nation’s Largest Fleet of Autonomous Shuttles

Autonomous Vehicles Colorado (AvCo), is a series of micro transit services that use driverless, electric shuttles to connect people with key destinations in Colorado. The Colorado Smart Cities Alliance is the nonprofit at the center of the project.

Service in the first of three locations launched in August 2021 at Colorado School of Mines in Golden. The autonomous shuttle buses connected Mines students, faculty, staff and the general public with key destinations in the city and around campus that lacked convenient mobility options. The shuttles safely navigated regular traffic using advanced sensors and technology, signaling a major step forward for the industry.

AvCo is defining our mobility future. The project’s impact will be immediate and longterm, offering benefits such as improved road safety, reduced carbon emissions, and enhanced access for more people.

Visit the AvCo website for more information. The project has received extensive media coverage from major publications and broadcast networks including The Hill, Colorado Public Radio, Denver Post and many more.

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