Colorado Smart City Update – Broomfield and Westminster

By | February 8, 2021
Smart City Overview

Smart City Overview

Adjoining cities here in NW Denver are both in process and budgeting for Smart City.

Westminster issued their RFP a few weeks ago and today Broomfield released adopted budget including Smart City.

From the budget:

Project Description:

Improve the quality of life by enhancing and adding new City and County of Broomfield services to the community through the use and access of unified high‐speed connected technologies.

Background and Justification:

The factors that are driving the City and County to evaluate the need to connect citizens, businesses and our community to new and emerging opportunities that require access and use of connected technologies. These opportunities include smart cars, smart homes, automated traffic control, sensor based real time monitoring of industrial affects on the environment, telemedicine, uses of artificial intelligence, and many more example of how the Internet of Things (IoT).

The common denominator behind all of the smart technologies and future use of dynamic sensors and artificial intelligence is a universal fast, affordable, and reliable connection. Commonly referred to as broadband services, that are delivered to mobile and static devices. The foundation for broadband services is a network that is comprised of fiber‐optics and high‐speed wireless communications systems.

Problem to be Solved and/or Benefit to Citizens:

Should City Council decide to proceed with coordinating the development of a universal network, the goals will be to promote economic development, increase options and competition for internet service providers, reduce time to delivery and access barriers for communications between organizations, sensors, or other network aware devices, and paving the way for future education, lifestyle, and health and transportation services.

Alternatives/Consequences if not Funded:

The Information Technology department would recommend utilizing an add service on top of the public WiFi network that could be used to recover costs and possibly support future development of a Smart City network.

Project Association:

This project could be associated with any other CIP request involving the use of fiber optics or other communications media.

Operating Budget Impact:

Depending on the size and scope of what would need to be accomplished, the plan is to utilize a master developer approach to minimize impacts on existing resources.

Total Project Cost: $4,136,066