Much of the collaboration between GCTC’s more than 150 participating cities worldwide and 400 companies and organizations has been centered around innovation - finding new practices and ideas like using wireless sensors to test for water main leaks, automatically dimming streetlights when no one is around by using motion sensors, or using traffic management systems to reduce roadway congestion. “We’re going to have transportation systems, public safety, energy, water and they’re going to all focus on creating benefits and creating real deployments.”Ĭybersecurity and privacy, Rhee said, is the new layer that will be added on top of existing efforts to develop policy for an emerging Internet of Things. That theme we’re not going to change,” said Sokwoo Rhee, associate director of the cyber-physical systems program at NIST. “The Global Cities Team Challenge has focused on replication and scalability and also bringing more cities to adopt best practices for smart cities.

Though it includes the word “challenge” in its name, GCTC is not a hackathon-style program and has no winners - the collaborative journey is the prize offered to all participants. The program’s director told StateScoop that the past three or four years were intended to generate momentum behind smart cities, and now is the time to get serious about security. The new partnership will allow the program to enter a 2018 phase of events and programming involving private industry and local governments entitled the “Smart and Secure Cities and Communities Challenge.” The Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC), a program founded in 2014 and hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), announced that it will now be co-hosted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. The federal government’s keystone program to support smart city development has announced that cybersecurity and privacy will be given new emphasis in its latest phase.

Nist global cities team challenge