Dive Brief:

• The City of Las Vegas has entered into a 12-month agreement with startup UrbanLeap to use the company’s urban innovation management platform to coordinate all of its smart city projects in one place.
• UrbanLeap’s custom toolkit will allow the city’s Department of Technology and Innovation to evaluate new proposals and technology in one spot, and track data from any pilot projects. Transportation and internet of things (IoT) pilots will be the first to be managed through the platform.
• UrbanLeap has done similar work with Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, CA and San Mateo, CA.

Dive Insight:

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has said Las Vegas wants to be "not only a smart city, but the smartest city," and the city’s Innovate.Vegas campaign has helped bring new technology to downtown corridors. The government has worked to deploy new mobility technology, bringing autonomous shuttles to city streets, attracting a new autonomous vehicle technical center from Aptiv, and recently rolling out a network of cameras and sensors to help with traffic management.

Keeping track of what projects are effective and worth expanding can be a challenge, which is where UrbanLeap seeks to help. The company’s cloud-based management creates project visualizations to show progress, draws up contracts and gives vendors and cities a platform to share information and feedback. UrbanLeap says it can help cities understand how successful a new project might be before actually taking the leap, a helpful step to save money and time.   

"The city needed a platform capable of managing our vast innovation and technology portfolio," said Las Vegas Chief Information Officer Michael Sherwood in a statement. "A key for us is the ability to gain visibility into our projects, actively monitor their progress, and share the results with other public agencies, stakeholders and the residents of Las Vegas."

Similar project management platforms are catching on, as more cities embrace technology pilots. Smart Cities Council, for example, developed a “Smart Cities Project Activator” this summer that helps cities share best practices and streamline new initiatives across different departments. Similarly, Marketplace.city has partnered with 100 Resilient Cities to expand its marketplace of smart cities technology, allowing potential clients to see reviews of vendors and technology from other cities.