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Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs Wants To Tell Cities What To Do

This article is more than 8 years old.

Photo by Thomas Koehler/Photothek via Getty Images

We have smartphones, smart cars--why not smart cities?

The Department of Transportation announced a partnership on Thursday with Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs to encourage just that. Sidewalk, a sister company to Google, says it will build a data analytics platform called Flow that will integrate with sensors and information from a variety of sources: traffic, parking, public transportation, and more.

Ultimately, the goal is to bring cities into the connected age. Urban planners could use such data to shape city design and infrastructure. Public transportation officials could adjust options in real time as demand fluctuates. Consumers could be notified of congestion and parking availability as needed.

"Essentially the way this will work is we will build a platform for ingesting lots of different types of data that will enable users to understand the ground truth in real time," Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff said in a conference call with reporters. "Data will come from billions of anonymized trips, sensors monitoring traffic and other conditions on the street, data from third party applications, the city’s own data--all fed into an analytical engine."

Still, details are scarce on this project, which Doctoroff mentioned may be at least two years away from implementation. The initial development for Flow will be in partnership with the seven finalists for the DOT's Smart City Challenge: Austin, Columbus, Denver, Kansas City (MO), Pittsburgh, Portland (OR), and San Francisco. Flow will be implemented in the winning city first, for free, but Sidewalk wants it eventually to be used by many other cities as well.

"Our hope is that the product will be rolled out in time across the United States and around the world, including in New York City," Doctoroff said.

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