Speakers at the upcoming SC3 kickoff, PSCR & SCITI funding programs, SCOPE workshop call for paper

Dear Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) community,

Prominent speakers from states and local governments will provide invaluable insights at the GCTC - Smart and Secure Cities and Communities Challenge (SC3) kickoff conference. Key speakers include:

• Kirk Lonbom, Acting Secretary, Department of Innovation & Technology, State of Illinois
• Karen Jackson, Former Secretary of Technology, Commonwealth of Virginia
• Tim Blute, Director, Future, National Governors Association
• Bob Bennett, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Kansas City, MO
• Allan Friedman, Director of Cybersecurity at National Telecommunications and Information Administration, US Department of Commerce
• Khoong Hock Yun, Chief Digital Evangelist, Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)

You can see preliminary agenda and speakers list. Every attendee will have an opportunity to introduce themselves and join the live discussion in the breakout sessions.

• When: Feb 6-7, 2018
• Where: FHI 360 Conference Center in Washington DC. (1825 Connecticut Ave NW, 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20009, USA)
• Event website: https://pages.nist.gov/GCTC/event/gctc-kickoff-2018/. Free registration is open at https://appam.certain.com/profile/39236

The GCTC-SC3 conference will be immediately followed by IES-City Framework Release Workshop on Feb 8. GCTC community members may choose to stay one more day and join the IES-City Workshop as well. The final agenda of GCTC-SC3 kickoff conference will be made available in a couple of weeks.
Limited travel support is available for city/community officials on first-come-first-served basis, but higher priorities will be given to the municipal members of 2017 action clusters and 2018 action clusters formed before the kickoff. Contact Sokwoo (Sokwoo.rhee@nist.gov) for more details.

NIST Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Point Cloud City Funding Opportunities.

PSCR is excited to announce the release of the NIST Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program - Point Cloud City NOFO for research and development grants and cooperative agreements. PSCR is seeking applications from pioneering U.S. state and local governments to create a model 'Point Cloud City'. Successful applicants will receive funding to generate an extensive catalog of annotated 3D indoor point clouds that can be used by industry, academia, and government to advance research and development in the areas of indoor mapping, localization and navigation for public safety, as well as to demonstrate the potential value of ubiquitous indoor positioning and location-based information. Recipients will also participate in the NIST Global Cities Team Challenge initiative as the lead for an Action Cluster.

PSCR anticipates up to $500,000 may be available to fund awards in the range of $50,000 to $500,000 total with project performance periods of up to one (1) year. Submission deadline is March 14, 2018.

Additional NIST Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Funding Opportunities.

• PSCR's First Responder Virtual Reality Heads-up-display Navigation Challenge. This concept and design challenge is open to academia, solvers and developers across the country and will award cash prizes up to $125,000 to the Top challenge participants who submit virtual reality heads up displays for First Responders to be evaluated in a series of navigation challenges. See challenge.gov for details. Submission deadline is January 26, 2018.
• PSCR's Unmanned Aerial Systems Flight and Payload Challenge. This design and engineering challenge is open to academia, solvers and developers across the country and will award cash prizes up to $320,000 to the Top challenge participants who build a cost-effective, hardware prototype of a UAS (unmanned aerial systems) that increases flight time and payload for public safety operations. Go to challenge.gov for details. Submission deadline is January 29, 2018

Smart Cities Internet of Things Innovation (SCITI) Labs: Request for Innovators

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and its research and development (R&D) partners issued a Request for Innovators (RFI) seeking to prototype, test and transition cutting-edge emergency response technologies. The goal is to put tools with smart city and Internet of Things capabilities into the hands of first responders by 2020.

S&T and its partners at the Center for Innovative Technology, Smart City Works and TechNexus are seeking new capabilities to support first responders in three specific areas:

• Autonomous navigation for indoor drones in support of search and rescue missions in difficult environments, such as fire or earthquake damaged structures. Separate sensor prototypes are also sought: a WiFi finder sensor for smart phone signals and a thermal sensor for detecting the heat signatures of people or other living creatures.
• Indoor building sensor suite (digital image, video, thermal or WiFi finder) to be mounted on fixed indoor building features, such as smoke detectors or exit signs. Sensor processing will be able to establish a baseline layout of indoor space and detect changes when events impact interiors and/or occupants.
• Body-worn responder interoperability platform that integrates personal area network communications with third-party sensor packages. This Smart Hub will also communicate with non-body-worn sensors, such as smart building and smart city technologies, and responders would use it for situational awareness and to support enhanced mission-critical operations.

Check the RFI link above to express interest by January 18th, with invited final responses due by February 15, 2018. Final selection will be announced in March 2018. Selected performers will be funded at $50,000 for an initial first cut prototype. Some will be selected for a second funded validation prototype (at $100,000) over a total period of 18 months. The goal at the end of the second round is to have commercially-relevant capabilities that are also ready as a minimum viable product for initial field testing with responders.

Call for Papers: Third International Workshop on Science of Smart City Operations and Platforms Engineering (SCOPE) in partnership with Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) - SCOPE-GCTC

In its third year, GCTC is happy to partner with Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia, and DHS S&T to chair SCOPE-GCTC workshop co-located with CPS Week in Porto, Portugal. We encourage GCTC-SC3 community members to submit papers.

• Workshop date: April 10, 2018
• Workshop location: Porto, Portugal (Co-located with CPS Week)
• Workshop and submission URL: https://cps-vo.org/group/SCOPE-18

Important Dates:

• Submission of papers: February 4, 2018
• Author notification: February 25, 2018
• Camera Ready: March 11, 2018

Papers should describe original work and be maximum 6 pages in length using the IEEE paper format. Submissions can fall under one or more of the following categories: (1) initial and promising research results, (2) smart cities case studies, and (3) position statements with sufficient justification and rationale for the proposed idea(s). At least three workshop committee members will review all submitted papers. We require at least one author of each accepted paper to register and present the paper at the workshop. (i.e., we will not allow no-shows). Accepted papers will be included with the CPS Week proceedings.

Feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested in learning more about 2018 GCTC-SC3. Thank you all.

Sokwoo & Scott

Sokwoo Rhee, Ph.D.
Associate Director | Cyber-Physical Systems Innovation
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Email: sokwoo.rhee@nist.gov

Scott Tousley
Deputy Director | Cyber Security Division
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate
Email: scott.tousley@hq.dhs.gov

Join us at GCTC-SC3 Kickoff on Feb 6-8 in DC: https://pages.nist.gov/GCTC/event/gctc-kickoff-2018/