Innovation & Strategy

Technology such as Smart City applications, artificial intelligence, machine learning, metaverse, blockchain and other technological advancements improve the delivery and efficiency of City services.

Global Affairs includes international VIP visits (Heads of State/Presidents/Prime Ministers, Ambassadors, Consuls General, Honorary Consuls General), international economic development, foreign direct investment, tourism and supporting our local multiethnic, multilingual diaspora communities.

The office of Innovation and Strategy has active partnerships and working relationships with the State Department, National Security Council, Sister Cities International, the World Affairs Council of Dallas Fort Worth, the Japan America Society of Dallas Fort Worth and the National Medal of Honor Museum, among others. 

Sports include the World Cup 2026, CrossFit Games 2024, Teqball, youth sports, sports tourism, sports facilities and other local and regional opportunities. Recruiting and executing large-scale sporting events requires intentional planning to optimize the experience for residents, visitors and stakeholders.

The office of Innovation and Strategy has active partnerships and working relationships with FIFA, the Dallas Sports Commission, the Fort Worth Sports Commission, the Dallas Mavericks, CrossFit and multiple professional sports leagues, among others.

The office of Innovation and Strategy has active partnerships and working relationships with the North Texas Innovation Alliance, Texas Innovation Alliance, Alliance for Innovation, Cities Today, US Ignite, Cisco, the Smart Cities World Expo and Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Techstars, among others.

• City of Fort Worth: Time and resources in the blockchain ledger (bitcoin story).

• Economic Development Department:
  • R&D incentive programs for emerging tech.
  •  Innovation Districts that support emerging technologies.
• Environmental Services Department: The WM Smart Truck program is designed to help the City of Fort Worth’s Solid Waste Division create cleaner, safer, more sustainable communities while giving residents more visibility into their service. The truck-mounted technology captures footage of residential containers as they are tipped into the truck during service. The software, working with GPS, also notes the service address and helps Waste Management mark residents' pickup complete. Technicians review the footage to make sure carts were place at the curb at the right day and time, materials were placed in the correct container and collected successfully. Solid Waste staff can give residents a heads-up if a container associated with their service address is overloaded, contains non-acceptable material or has extra bags outside the cart so residents can adjust their service levels or usage.

• Fort Worth Public Library: Open Access libraries Northwest Regional Library is staff-less and IoT with its extended hours.

• Neighborhood Wi-Fi program: The City collaborated with technology company Cisco and digital services provider Presidio to launch free Wi-Fi across five — soon to be six — underserved communities in Fort Worth, where lack of home internet access was detrimentally impacting educational opportunities, professional opportunities and overall quality of life for an estimated 40,000 residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  •  The neighborhoods were selected through information provided through the Neighborhood Improvement Program, which measures data such as household income, poverty and crime rates so that support services can be concentrated on areas where they’re needed most.
  • This first step in the City of Fort Worth’s long-term strategy for fiber optic connectivity citywide provided digital connectivity to 40,000 residents. All five neighborhoods now have restricted broadband coverage of between 55 and 90% of residences, and the Wi-Fi initiative will keep residents connected as fiber optic networks are built over the next five to seven years.
  • This project is the largest deployment of Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul for neighborhood Wi-Fi use in the world. Schools and City facilities such as libraries and community centers — many of which already offered free Wi-Fi — were utilized to amplify and relay the City’s wireless signal to target neighborhoods through radio technology. More than 100 Cisco access points have been installed to date.
  • Once deployment is complete, the City of Fort Worth will also prioritize digital literacy for residents so they understand how to access resources and consume content in a safe and secure way.
  • Fort Worth’s larger vision is to have reliable, high-speed internet connectivity available for residents and businesses along with all other utilities as a necessity for modern life.
• Police Department: Cameras, ALPRs and drones; DIY in-house regional leader, pop-up cameras with Transportation & Public Works for intersections, Stormwater for flood control, Code Compliance for illegal dumping and package theft on doorsteps.

•  Transportation & Public Works:
  •  Fonroche Lighting and solar energy streetlights controls and integration.
  • School flashers/railroad crossings Railroad Crossing Monitoring System - YouTube.
  • Flood detection Flood Detection System - YouTube.
  • Smart geogrids: pilot study for sensors installed on FAA Boulevard.
  • Streetlighting controls (Glance software).
  • Hot Corridor implementation: The City is moving forward with the project development of “Hot Corridors” along East Lancaster Avenue, East Berry Street and McCart Avenue. The projects tie technology, land use and economic development to the City’s bond program arterials and large federal projects. The hot corridors may include the following features:

• Premium transit with upgraded stations, level-boarding, offboard fare-collection technology for on-time operation, frequent service, Wi-Fi and other world-class transit features.
• Smart City multimodal network that incorporates fiber and Wi-Fi, E/V charging opportunities and smart traffic signals to monitor and regulate traffic flow and parking.
• Affordable housing and business incubator space that is pedestrian-oriented (complete with walking paths and bike lanes), creates a sense of place and catalyzes investment in the area, supported by a form-based code.
• Future-proofed design, with the ability to scale up as the area’s population density grows.
• Southeast Fort Worth Mobility Proving Ground Southside Mobility Safety Project: The TPW RTI Team worked with NCTCOG and local universities as “Team DFW” in the Texas Innovation Alliance Mobility Challenge. Team DFW won the competition for its project designed to use broadband and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology to improve safety in a economically disadvantaged district in the Historic Southside of Fort Worth.
• Replica Data platform: Citywide deployment of the tool that uses Bluetooth and other technology to provide up-to-date multimodal transportation information using a series of validated sources. The platform provides recent information (up to two weeks ago) and historic data to capture travel trends, counts, origins and destinations and other relevant information to inform project decisions and support more efficient network operations. The tool is available for use by all City employees.

• Water Department:
  • Smart Metering: The MyH2O portal is a one-stop-shop of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) data for conservation support and consumption monitoring.
  • SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system.
  • SmartFlush: Flush high water bill worries away with the SmartFlush program on high-efficiency Kohler toilets.

Future

• Aviation Department: The Spinks Master Plan seeks to explore future solar farms and vertiports for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) with innovation and eVTOLs.
• Environmental Services Department: Future enhancements may include the use of AI to monitor the contents of recycling and garbage carts as they are dumped, helping to identify and reduce contamination in the recycling stream, prevent recyclable materials from going to the landfill and educate residents. This will help ensure that only non-recyclable items go to the landfill; preserve landfill life; increase recycling quantity, quality and revenue to the City; and control recycling processing costs.

Discussions began in 2017: https://dallasinnovates.com/fort-worth-lays-foundation-for-its-smart-city-future/