What we’re thinking about at ProspectSV – Innovations for cities

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It doesn’t get much bigger than this – the way we live is changing rapidly, and where we live must change with us. Globally, there are more of us on the planet every year, and as we grow in population, more of us live in cities. In fact, cities around the world already account for more than half of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and for about two-thirds of global energy use. By some estimates, we’ll see a massive shift to nearly 80% of global population in urban centers by 2050, and an estimated 10 billion people on our planet.

Urbanization and population growth on this scale are already stressing our current systems – traffic, energy, water and waste, even communications.  In turn, governments around the world are rethinking how they manage infrastructure and resources. With the rush to urban centers crowding more of us together while at the same time, we’re striving to address the reality of climate change and the need for new approaches to energy, meeting these emerging needs with technology and innovation requires new thinking, and common ground. Sadly, two of the key tools we have to effectively address growth and efficiency in our cities — urban planning and emerging “clean” or “smart” technologies — are out of sync. Public process, appropriately, looks out over a horizon of decades while technology changes at lightning speed. If we want to transform the experience of our commute, the energy cost of our living and working spaces, the health and safety of our surroundings, we must take new approaches to upgrading public infrastructure.

The good news: the future has never looked brighter for urbantech; there is a vibrant and thriving innovation sector focused on creating technology solutions to radically change urban centers. Developments in battery technology, already giving rise to unprecedented offerings in electric vehicles, are set to transform both the transit and commercial buildings industries, unlocking untapped potential to reduce energy and fossil fuel consumption. The Connected Car isn’t a dream, it’s a reality, with Dedicated Short Range Communications coming to US automobiles as early as 2017 – a whole new realm of capability awaits us. Distributed sensor environments give us incredible new capacity to manage traffic congestion and unlock a new age of computing for urban systems.

Yet, with a myriad of advancements in communications technology and infrastructure, there is a very slow adoption of the technologies into urban environments by cities. Unlike commercial markets, which respond rapidly to price and quality in a dynamic market, city governments to take a decades-long view, following a process and policy legacy that assures cautious, deliberative use of public dollars. We’re facing a collision between these realities, because those decades-durable systems are about to meet Moore’s law. And we’re all going to have to reconsider what we think of when we think of cities.

City governments have a critical role to play as often the most tangible unit of management in our society. In 21st century California, this means a responsibility to build a foundation for a low-carbon urban system that scales regionally, and globally. To see the solutions that mean most to us as citizens, we need our cities need to collaborate. And to succeed with this charge, we must disrupt business-as-usual approaches to planning for urban futures that segment innovation and infrastructure; instead, we’ve got to focus on ways to unlock the next thousand solutions that can’t be discovered if we don’t work together. The well-worn term “Public Private Partnership” needs a makeover, and fast.Screen Shot 2016-05-20 at 10.34.39 AM

More and more, we need public sector staff and private innovators to be working side by side, in collaboration around the critical needs for our urban system. The challenge in problems like traffic congestion or the rising impact of carbon-based energy, or the path to forming a truly clean, connected, “smart” city is in finding ways to bring the long-view into focus with the pace of change in technology.  We’re in a time with an unprecedented focus on wide-scale solutions for our roadways, transit systems, buildings and energy, yet the planning, policies and processes that a city rightfully follows to act in the public’s trust, can be an obstacle to the iterative problem solving we need to build solutions fast.

ProspectSV has been working on this problem for years, and we’ve seen some early successes in getting the public and private sectors together. We’ve worked with cities to adopt electric vehicles into their fleets, build charging station networks, convert streetlights to energy efficient LED. And we’re now building demonstration-scale projects including microgrids, zero-net-energy buildings, and connected roadways in partnership with a host of private and public sector partners in the Bay Area.

Thanks to Microsoft, who supplied us with a host of software offerings including Azure Cloud, we are building the basic elements of collaborative innovation in the traffic space – drawing together data feeds from traffic signals, transit systems, regional roadways and alike for developers to access as a use case for their applications. Coupled with our driving simulation lab (SimLab), we have a pretty amazing platform to offer. And we’ll continue to build accessible environments at the urban scale as proof points for emerging technology.

Scalable solutions in these complex systems will arrive faster, and Industry will collaborate, and invest more aggressively in technology development and commercialization, if the right conditions exist for innovation to really happen between companies and government.  For a City, that means diverting from acquisition processes, creating access and usage environments that look more like shared workspace, and working as stakeholders in a problem that extends beyond their borders so that the solution that comes out the other side, works for everybody.  We can help this happen by creating the right conditions for success in just a few places, linked to the needs of hundreds of similar places, and bring a new dynamic to innovation in the public trust.

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ProspectSV is a nonprofit urbantech innovation hub focused on solutions for smarter, cleaner cities. We bring government, corporations and academia together with startups, product teams and expert staff to accelerate innovations in transportation, energy and the built environment. ProspectSV provides a full spectrum of commercialization support including market and technical insight, connections to partners and investors, pilot opportunities as well as access to a $12 million, 23,000 sq. ft. Technology Demonstration Center with working and industrial space, lab facilities and specialized equipment. In partnership with state and local governments, ProspectSV demonstrates and scales leading edge solutions, with successes resulting in the avoidance of nearly 150 million lbs. of CO2 in the coming decade. With projects in over 50 cities, leveraging over $50 million in funding and financing and with more than 25 corporate sponsors, ProspectSV is the only organization with the ability to both prove and apply solutions for next generation cities. For more information visit prospectsv.org.

 

Doug Davenport, CE), Prospect Silicon Valley

dougThe significance of technology in modern society is unquestionable, and in many ways, using technology to address social challenges has been a cornerstone of Doug Davenport’s career. As the Founding Executive Director of Prospect Silicon Valley, Mr. Davenport leads a dedicated team of professionals who are passionate about the emergence of innovative technology in transportation, buildings, energy and the environment, and their potential to meet the challenges of our changing world.

Over a 25-year career, Doug has served in leadership roles to bring future context to conventional practice. Prior to founding ProspectSV, Doug forged a new approach to industry partnerships at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the Energy and Environmental Technologies Division where he led business strategy for its FlexLab Building Technologies research platform, and was the architect of CalCharge, a nationally recognized consortium of battery technology start-ups, enabling unprecedented collaboration with Berkeley Lab’s research talent and facilities. Prior to this, Doug led engineering and scientific teams in Tetra Tech’s greenhouse gas accounting and renewable energy practice areas, and was a lead consultant supporting the US Navy’s Base Realignment and Closure programs in California. He carries a Master of Science in Environmental Engineering as well as a Master of Business Administration, both from the University of Wisconsin.

When he’s not working, Doug can be found spoiling his dog, Charlie.

Kevin Lo, Former GM, Google Fiber

kevin (1)-minKevin Lo is the co­founder and former GM of Google Fiber. For the past 5 years, Kevin led product, business and operations for Google Fiber a TV and Gigabit Internet service provider operating in 9 US metro markets. At Google, he also led a number of wireless initiatives including Google’s partnership to provide WiFi in US Starbucks stores. Before joining Google, Kevin was the COO of M2Z Networks, a wireless service provider. He also served as the CFO and COO of Navisite Inc where he led the successful turnaround of the publicly traded telecom services company. Kevin was also the founder and CEO of two software companies, both of which were acquired in the 2000s. Prior to that, Kevin was a strategy consultant at Bain & Co and got his start in software programming as a research assistant at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Kevin received his AB from Harvard University where he was a Harvard National Scholar. Kevin is a board member of several technology companies, has an active interest in US broadband policy and technology­ in­ education initiatives; he is also an avid triathlete.