By William “Garn” Anderson III, Knight Center of Digital Excellence
If you are trying to understand all of the possible program opportunities resulting from the ARRA and economic stimulus funds, you might feel overwhelmed. For example, how do you begin sorting through the complexities of the whole Smart Grid concept, and its potential benefits for U.S. communities and our energy utilization?
As in any building project, the first step is to settle on an overall strategic plan before you attempt to decide details. For communities, this means thinking hard about planning, so that Smart Grids and Smart Infrastructure can be a means of achieving goals and interoperability for hardwire or wireless applications. Smart investment means that smart planning drives decisions on new infrastructure.
Otherwise, in a few years from now, you might find yourself driving by a community college in town, a hospital, or even a high school or middle school, and kicking yourself for not thinking ahead.
The kinds of things you don’t want to be saying to yourself five years from now:
“Gee, when we did that big road project in town, with a little bit of extra effort and planning, we could have laid the fiber to make our community college wireless.”
Or: “What were we thinking? When we were installing those cameras downtown to improve public safety – so the police could monitor suspicious activity – we should have connected our emergency response system to the hospitals, too, so doctors, nurses and medics could quickly respond to the accidents and victims of injury.”
Or: “When we had the funds for interactive e-learning and work force development, imagine how much further ahead we’d be had we linked all of our anchor institutions and businesses together.”
You get the picture - of where you don’t want to be, that is.
Now here’s where you do what to be.
Instead of just planning for the use of Smart Grids, you’re examining the benefits of Smart Infrastructure and interoperability of numerous applications. A Smart Infrastructure ties together a vast array of projects and technologies for maximum benefit across sectors. It’s the opposite of the silo approach to planning, and it draws on an understanding that interconnectivity can serve multiple purposes. If you’re installing new roads, for example, you want to stretch your investment by laying fiber for Internet connections at the same time.
Similarly, with a little extra planning for a bridge project, you might easily connect an industrial park in your community to high-speed wireless Internet, allowing the sending and receiving of huge amounts of data and information. At the same time, having a smart road and smart bridge can improve traffic flow to help save time in daily commutes and avoid delays. All of this, in turn, could mean the difference between attracting new business or losing opportunities.
Smart Infrastructure isn’t just about Smart Grid energy efficiency. It’s also about having Smart Homes, Smart Schools, Smart Hospitals, Smart Buildings, Smart Safety Services, and really, Smart Communities. Just imagine all of the benefits. A Smart Home, for example, might have various medical monitoring devices, so that the frail and sick can be monitored and quickly assisted from remote locations. For some, this could represent the difference between living independently at home, or having no choice but to move to costly assisted-care facilities.
The take-away: The test of where you’ll be in five years, and whether your community is reflecting on what it should have done or reaping the benefits of a fully functional smart infrastructure, depends on where you are today. Is your community planning holistically? Are you thinking regionally about how you might leverage assets through collaboration? Are you working in tandem with your local, regional and state planning agencies?
A recent report from the Center for American Progress titled “Smart Grid, Smart Broadband, Smart Infrastructure,” points out that with “a bit of imagination and coordination” among federal agencies, federal stimulus funding can be stretched to achieve diverse goals. “The agencies,” the report urged, “should look for two-fers and three-fers – ways to update our electricity system, deploy broadband and achieve other goals when spending the stimulus money.’’
Even more recently, U.S. Rep. Anna Eschoo (D-Calif.) introduced legislation (HR 2428) to require that broadband conduit be installed as part of certain highway construction projects. It’s encouraging to see the momentum moving in this direction.
Yet in addition to federal initiatives, community leaders and stakeholders, in their requests for ARRA stimulus money, need to help lay the groundwork on a local level for comprehensive infrastructure to happen. Proposals should reflect holistic planning that considers education, health care, medical, economic development, employment, work force development and public safety as well as individual needs.
Smart Infrastructure? It starts with smart planning for smart stimulus proposals.
William “Garn” Anderson III is Vice President for Business & Community Intelligence of the Cleveland-based technology nonprofit OneCommunity, which operates the Knight Center of Digital Excellence in partnership with The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. To learn more about the Knight Center, go to www.knightcenter.org or e-mail info@knightcenter.org.
