NIST Leads U.S. Delegation to Singapore World Cities Summit

On 02-06 June 2024, the NIST Smart Cities program lead, Dr. Michael Dunaway, led a U.S. delegation to the World Cities Summit (WCS) in Singapore to discuss areas of mutual interest related to smart cities and communities through the bilateral U.S.-Singapore Critical and Emerging Technology (CET) Dialogue.

The delegation was comprised of U.S. Government (USG) representatives from three agency programs: the National Institute of Standards and Technology Smart Connected Systems Division; the Department of Transportation’s Smart Mobility Program under the U.S.-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership (USASCP); and the Department of Commerce International Trade Administration (ITA). The delegation was coordinated by the Office of the Science & Technology Advisor to the Secretary of State (STAS) and funded by USASCP through the Office of Multilateral Affairs in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State.

The U.S. delegation also included four members of U.S. private sector entities: CIO of the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority; Executive Director of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, a regional collaboration based in Denver; CEO of Marketplace.city, a public sector technology consulting firm; and a NYU professor and CEO of the urban design and data analytics firm, State of Place. The U.S. delegation thus consisted of federal and local government agencies, not-for-profit and for-profit enterprises, and a research university, all with expertise in technology integration for smart cities. In addition to meetings with Singaporean organizations and officials, delegation members attended sessions of the World Cities Summit—the largest urban planning and technology integration conference in the ASEAN region—and met with representatives of other ASEAN nations and commercial sector interests.

As the initial meeting between the U.S. and Singaporean governments on dedicated smart cities collaboration, the delegation accomplished the key objectives of establishing a channel for ongoing conversations and defining preliminary aspects of Singaporean and U.S. smart city ecosystems in order to help inform the structure of future U.S.-Singapore collaborations on smart cities, the development and integration of CET, and the commercialization of technologies through partnerships among business and industrial interests to the benefit of communities and residents of both Singapore and the United States.