City of Coral Gables
Innovation and Technology Department
INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIC PLAN
• 2016-2020 & 2021-2025: 10-Year Accomplishments
• 2026 Strategic Plan Update, Goals and Objectives
Prepared by: Raimundo Rodulfo, P.E., PMP, MSEM SMIEEE, ITIL, PCIP, CSSBB Chief Innovation Officer / Director of Innovation and Technology
Version: January 2026
Latest Version at: www.CoralGables.com/ITDocs
INDEX
• 1 – Strategic Plan Overview – pg. 3
• 2 – Strategic Plan Layout and Alignment – pg. 25
• 3 – Strategic Priorities, Project Goals and Accomplishments – pg. 57
• 4 – Long Term Research Projects and Future Vision Plan – pg. 87
• 5 – SWOT Analysis – pg. 96
• 6 – CGIT Organization – pg. 97
The City of Coral Gables Innovation and Technology Department (CGIT) works together with the city’s leadership and all city departments and offices as a key strategic partner bringing value, efficiencies, and process improvements across the organization through a significant number of technological solutions, value-driven projects and result-oriented smart city initiatives that benefit the city and its constituents. We also help City departments achieve accreditation and compliance with federal, state, county, city and industry standards, best practices, rules and regulations for information governance, security, public safety, sustainability, environmental conservation, financial administration, business processes, and other government controls.
Technology plays an important role in many of the City’s services and operations during normal and emergency conditions by facilitating communication between employees, constituents, and stakeholders; by fostering collaboration and innovation; expediting tasks, increasing productivity and operational efficiencies; by reducing carbon footprint and assessing and managing risks; and, by enhancing the delivery of citizen services with added value and convenience. Technology and innovation help our city become more sustainable, resilient, and livable This important role has been particularly evident during natural disasters and health crises, when digital technologies and the resourcefulness of our team helped our organization and our constituents stay connected, safe, and productive, while helping our community recover and thrive
The CGIT Department’s Mission is: “To provide the City of Coral Gables with reliable and sustainable technical services and innovative smart city solutions that bring value to the organization and its constituents and enhance business processes and effectiveness for all departments.” We align ourselves with the City’s vision of a “World class city with a hometown feel,” with city values, mission, and strategic goals, and with the needs and priorities of our community. Coral Gables was founded on innovation and standards of excellence for citizen services and quality of life, inspired by the City Beautiful, Garden City, and Mediterranean Revival urban planning and design movements –and, our City has sustained these principles over the years, up to the present and into the future. Now Coral Gables is also part of the Smart City movement, in alignment with those foundational principles. For the last eight years during the execution of this plan our city has leveraged technology, advanced innovation, applied strategic planning, and implemented best practices to continually improve citizen services and quality of life
Current State of the Innovation and Technology Plan Execution in 2026:
• On target and exceeding expectations. At 100% completion of 10-year strategic goals.
• Developed multi-disciplinary Innovation and Technology team capabilities and leadership; built a resultsoriented, competitive, highly performing Innovation and Technology human capital.
• Developed a robust, resilient, state-of-the-art smart city infrastructure; replaced legacy/obsolete technologies and eliminated technical debt across enterprise with scalable, agile, sustainable industry-leading solutions.
• Fostered the development of a citywide culture around quality, innovation, learning, collaboration, continuous improvement, and excellent customer service.
• Established standards and best management practices; implemented comprehensive policies and engineering frameworks; achieved high, competitive benchmarks in uptime, customer satisfaction, cost efficiency, and quality of services. CGIT also helped other city departments achieve top class accreditation and benchmarks.
• Leveraged innovation, technology, collaboration and best practices to help City departments improve quality of life KPI’s in public safety, transportation and mobility, sustainability and resilience, municipal services, digital inclusion and accessibility: 40+% reduction in crime and traffic accidents, 14% reduction in carbon emissions, 12% electrification and decarbonization of the municipal fleet, traffic/transportation/mobility/parking metric gains, emergency response times improvements, municipal service efficiencies, business attraction, jobs creation and economic development metrics growth, digital literacy programs, and other improvements.
• Earned 40+ national and international awards establishing Coral Gables as a leading smart city that leverages technology, engineering, innovation, and best practices to improve quality of life and services for its citizens, including: 1st place in the Digital Cities 2018, 1st place in the U.S. Open Cities in 2019 & 2020, 1st place in the 2023 Government Experience award, ASQ International Team Excellence Award in 2019, IEEE Smart Cities Jury Award in 2022, Smart Cities Council Innovation Excellence Award in 2022, Smart Cities Connect Award in Urban Infrastructure in 2020, 2023 & 2024, ICF Smart21 & Top7 Intelligent Community in 2023 & 2024, and Intelligent Community Full Certification in 2025-27, and being recognized as one of the 8 Smart Cities to Watch in 2020 by State Tech, one of the Top 12 worldwide in the Gartner’s Eye on Innovation Awards for government in 2021, and one of the world’s Top 7 Intelligent Communities of 2023 & 2024, among other awards and recognition.
• Built strategic partnerships with organizations across sectors and industries; and helped develop a smart city ecosystem that attracts talent and investment, fostering innovation and economic growth in our city
Next Phases of the Innovation and Technology Plan:
• 100% completion of 10-year strategic goals in 2025 with exceeded expectations. New strategic goals in 2026.
• Achieved 100% of citywide digital transformation/modernization and process improvement goals, and horizontal integration and paperless vision for digital efficiencies and interoperability between enterprise systems, knowledge areas and organization functional units New goals for innovation/improvement in 2026
• Complete ongoing construction projects in the City’s smart districts, smart buildings, and broadband corridors.
• Connect the City’s smart districts to the County’s Flagler corridor to the North, and to the US-1 Metrorail / Underline corridor to the South, to jump-start a long-term vision of an Innovation and Research Triangle with thriving technology parks, urban labs, public-private partnerships, incubators, accelerators, scaleups, consortia and think tanks in Coral Gables and adjacent neighborhoods, to boost regional collaboration on mobility, digital literacy, economic opportunities, entrepreneurship, resiliency, community programs and quality of life.
Strategic Planning Research Methodology:
The research process for the annual update of this plan follows a 360° strategic vision approach with input from our entire CGIT team, city leadership, city residents and constituents, the city's previous and new strategic management plans, IT strategic action plans, ongoing research and outside expertise in industry and academia, and existing CGIT frameworks. This research methodology helps us identify community and organizational needs and priorities, current gaps, and opportunities for improvement. The 2025 update of this strategic plan incorporates input material and information assets such as:
• Previous versions published of the City’s Innovation and Technology Strategic Plan (2020 and 2024 updates)
• Updated City Strategic Management Plan and Budget Workbooks (fiscal years 2024, 2025, 2026)
• Updated IT Strategic Action Plans, Baldrige Community of Excellence Framework (fiscal years 2024, 2025, 2026)
• Results report from the Coral Gables Community Surveys (NCS, 2021 and 2023)
• Reports, strategic priorities and recommendations from citizen advisory boards and committees, community meetings, town halls and City Commission meetings, community focus groups, local businesses and nonprofit organizations, and engaged citizens.
• Digital IT survey sent to the leadership of all city departments
• Technology steering committees and interdepartmental team meetings.
• Updated strategic goals from CGIT senior staff and all CGIT divisions.
• Digital IT survey sent to our smart city innovation partner organizations and to external subject matter experts (SME) and futurists in academia, government, and industry, such as: UM, FIU, NIST, GCTC, DOE, PNNL, IEEE, IISE, ASQ, DOD, USAF, NTIA, STIR Labs, MIT, CTI, UCB, Nova U, MDC college, CDG, ICF, and other organizations
• Digital IT survey sent to the entire CGIT team.
• Brainstorming and Design Thinking sessions with the entire CGIT team.
• Updated CGIT key performance indicators (KPI), balanced scorecards and other metrics and benchmarks
• Urban analytics AI and public sentiment data dashboards from the Coral Gables Smart City Hub platform.
• Resources from CGIT Smart City Digital Library (data platforms, engineering frameworks, published papers, project matrix, innovation and technology bulletin, and other resources.)
• Recent industry benchmarks and research, and STEM journals, books, research papers and articles
Smart City Journey:
CGIT promotes the development of a smart city ecosystem that fosters innovation and economic growth by bringing together through technology People, Businesses, Organizations, Things, and Systems. By leveraging strategic planning and innovation, the City’s digital transformation and smart initiatives benefit citizens with continuous improvement of customer service and quality of life Coral Gables is a vibrant community and international hub; home of the University of Miami, more than 140 multinational corporate headquarters and over 20 foreign consulates and trade offices The City’s regional Emergency Operations Center and its strategic location in the middle of Miami-Dade County support active inter-agency cooperation and mutual aid programs, highlights the high volume of traffic commutes on roads and highways, and accommodates the significant number of workers, students, and visitors from other cities; so that our smart city initiatives also have positive regional impacts.
Our smart city journey is defined by the components of transparency, value creation, efficiencies, inclusion, citizen engagement, open data, business intelligence, actionable information, governance, mobility, accessibility, crowdsourcing, and collaboration. It begins with a clear vision of excellence (fig. 1, pg. 47) and charts a strategic, practical, systematic, collaborative, and innovative roadmap that embraces the state of the art and leverages the exponential technologies from the 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) with a people-centric, quality-of-life focus (Quality 4.0) This roadmap implements several interconnected and interoperable elements that include a Smart City Hub public platform, Digital Twin Environments, Smart Districts Intelligent Connected Infrastructure, a Data Marketplace, an Application Store, Transparency Portals, a Community Intelligence Center, Open Data Platforms, Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems, R&D labs, and a robust and resilient technology infrastructure foundation with high-speed communications
Our journey to become a smarter city starts with understanding the needs and priorities of our community We augment institutional knowledge and public input from traditional methods of participation with modern technology tools to engage our citizens in a co-creative process and listen to their voice. Today, that includes digital community surveys that poll data indicating resident needs/satisfaction, citizen engagement portals, academic research studies, social networks, customer relationship apps, public meetings, citizen boards, public kiosks, and artificial intelligence and machine learning applied to public sentiment analytics. We use this insight as input to make our smart city plans and programs more effective, consensual, inclusive, equitable and collaborative, as part of a periodic elicitation cycle to gather business requirements from our constituents and our City’s leadership.
From vision to planning and execution, CGIT pivots on core disciplines such as: leadership, business / public administration, urban planning, project / program portfolio management, business analysis / intelligence, electrical / electronic engineering, industrial / systems / process / quality engineering, network / computer / software engineering, GIS / spatial computing, computer / data science, and infrastructure / technology / service design-build and integration; augmented by citywide expertise and core disciplines in key areas such as economic development, public safety, civil / mechanical / structural engineering, law / policy, and others. Building on those core competencies, our smart city roadmap is designed with 8 interconnected management frameworks (Fig. 2, pg.48):
I. Smart City Focus Areas Chart (fig. 3-4, pg. 49-50): At the center of this five-area chart, we highlight quality, continuous improvement, customer service, strategic planning, and innovation; and, around the clock: i. public safety, ii. sustainability, iii. enterprise systems, and iv. data and AI initiatives. This prioritization jump-starts transformative cycles with directives set forth by vision and objectives elicited from the smart city ecosystem stakeholders. Some of the initial large projects in this strategic plan started at the core and are not strictly technological; for example: citywide lean six sigma process improvement and standard operating procedures, streamlining processes, boosting efficiencies, reducing waste, and establishing systematic, methodical processes and best management practices across organization (as shown next in the CGIT quality engineering framework). IT Op-Ex cost savings derived from these early-stage projects were reinvested in R&D and innovation in then-emerging fields such as Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) Multiple initiatives are established under each peripheral focus area: public safety (smart policing, emergency management, resilience, business continuity), sustainability (reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint, supporting the City sustainability team’s green technology programs such as electric vehicles (EV) and EV charging stations –electrification and decarbonization of fleet operations–, electronic recycling, paper use reduction, energy efficiency, solar and alternative energy adoption, and water conservation), data-driven organization initiatives (AI agents and actionable data and insight for decision making, high visibility and situational awareness, workflow and process automation, data governance), enterprise systems powering digital transformation citywide (becoming paperless, leveraging electronic processes and automation, enterprise cloud platforms and apps that bring mobility, accessibility, efficiencies and convenience to our constituents) A detailed, actionable chart follows the high-level one with more specifics on how the organizational and digital transformation and post-digital improvements throughout the five focus areas deliver short- and long-term results, continuous value streaming and digital equity to our citizens, with many action items, proofs-of-concept, quick wins, and concurrent planning, execution, and high-ROI results along the way.
II. Quality Engineering and Continuous Improvement Framework (fig. 5, pg. 51): a toolkit of proven industrial engineering and quality assurance methodologies, standards and best practices that deliver business continuity, a smooth production cycle, value streaming, service and performance excellence benchmarks, and an organizational fabric that listens to the voice of the customer, continuously learns and improves itself, focus on customer service/satisfaction, streamlines operations, and boosts efficiencies and productivity; provisioning human-centric technologies that enable strong end-to-end business capabilities and ergonomics to ease the user’s experience and reduce digital friction. With built-in standards and methodologies learned from industry and academia (lean, six sigma, agile, scrum, ISO 9000, operations research, morphological analysis, ITIL ITSM & ITAM, business process optimization, balanced scorecards), CGIT applies this framework in comprehensive, citywide IT Operation Plans (CGITOP) and supply/asset/service management cycles with quality assurance and control We pivot on these efficiencies and cost savings to fund smart city projects, team development programs, R&D initiatives, technology proofs of concept and demo labs during development and refresh cycles of our cyberinfrastructure stack:
III. Our cyberinfrastructure stack pivoted on a smart, robust, and resilient network that provides a foundation of high-speed communications, hyperconnectivity and digital inclusion (fig. 6, pg. 52). Built and optimized over multiple years leveraging engineering standards, safety codes, cybersecurity frameworks and best practices from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), ANSI, ISO, IEC, NFPA and other organizations, our team designed and implemented a robust and resilient smart network that provides high speed and throughput capacity for city services, with redundancy, fault-tolerance and failover automation to keep critical communications always available for emergency services and first responders during hurricanes, power outages, and other incidents and disasters. During hurricane Irma, with over 80% power and telecommunication utilities down in the city, our network kept critical services always on for emergency managers and first responders (IEEE Coral Gables case study on paper “Connected through a Disaster,” published by IEEE Standards University ) This smart network layer provides the foundation for CGIT’s smart city engineering framework and the multiple services it supports in e-Gov, mobility, public safety and emergency response, digital literacy and virtual / remote education, public health and telemedicine, economic growth / opportunities and job creation, sustainability and EV charge network to set conditions for growth and adoption, integration of sensors and hardware to impact Vision Zero program and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and other benefits:
IV. Smart City Engineering Framework (fig. 7, pg. 53): a stack of technology infrastructure and digital government services with i. a foundation of resilient, high-speed communications (framework III); ii. a cyberphysical layer of IoT sensors, actuators, AI-powered Intelligent Connected Infrastructure (ICI) and smart devices
providing real-time urban and environmental visibility and control; iii. data platforms with distributed clouds and datacenters, analytics, AI and machine learning, and horizontal and vertical integration of enterprise systems and supply chain, providing a business intelligence back-end of data aggregation, integration, correlation, and analytics; iv. a smart city hub public platform, a “digital supermarket” and collaboration space that delivers value, digital services, open data and open API’s, transparency and business intelligence portals, citizen engagement tools and community initiatives, an app store and geographic information systems and mapping apps, a community intelligence center, and e-government services for digital equity and data democratization. The smart city hub delivers digital equity for v. the smart city ecosystem of people, businesses, organizations, things, and systems, with built-in trust mechanisms, and in alignment with vi. our organization’s vision of a world-class city, its mission of providing excellent services to our citizens, and its strategic management goals. The smart city engineering framework leverages strategic planning and innovation to continuously improve customer service and quality of life. In this smart city strategic project and service portfolio we leverage the exponential technologies of the 4th industrial revolution such as IoT, A.I., big data, advanced cybersecurity, drones/UAS, robotics and hyper-automation, mixed/augmented/virtual reality (XR), BIM/VDC, digital twins, and digital fabrication (fig 1, pg 47) We continue conducting outcome-driven pilots and research of other disruptive and emerging technologies such as blockchain, Web3 and decentralized data platforms, 5G networks, autonomous vehicles and smart and connected mobility. For our team, providing value-driven and high-ROI technology implies a continuous learning and reevaluation process.
There is also a holistic, continuous information assurance program built into this framework, directly connected to our IT operation plan (CGITOP) production cycles in the quality engineering framework. This program includes: i Risk Management, ii Protective Controls, iii Detective Controls, iv Technology Management, v Response Management, and vi Compliance Management, with multiple internal and external audits and compliance certification programs every year from accreditation agencies, industry standards councils, and qualified assessors; managing privacy, security, integrity, risks, acceptable use, and compliance within sensitive data environments:
V. Smart City Interoperability Systems Engineering Model and VI. Enterprise Systems Best Practice Framework (fig. 8-9, pg. 54):
As shown in previous frameworks above, our smart city cyberinfrastructure and information technology operations provide a multitude of digital services and value to our constituents and our stakeholders. Those smart city strengths also bring challenges in governance and interoperability in a highly regulated environment. Every time we develop a technological solution to a problem or functional gap, we make sure not to create other problems such as new functional/data silos, overcomplexity, waste, inefficiencies, risk and security vulnerabilities, inclusion/accessibility gaps, or compliance gaps Thus, we have designed technology frameworks and standard operating procedures to incorporate security, risk management, compliance, integration, accessibility, and quality controls from an early stage of any project, and never as an afterthought.
Our Smart City Interoperability Systems Engineering Model and Enterprise Systems Best Practice Framework help our team horizontally integrate enterprise systems and data platforms from multiple functional areas in the organization (financial, infrastructure, asset management, supply chain, public services, building/planning/zoning permitting and land management, licensing, public safety, community recreation, smart parking and mobility, technology and IoT and cyber-physical systems, and external collaborations and crowdsourcing), so these domains interoperate, communicate with each other; activate security controls to trust each other; enforce data governance, security, privacy and compliance requirements and controls; and, our systems can deliver real-time value and cohesive, correlated insight for decisionmakers, first responders, urban planners, researchers, city employees, and citizens in general. Comprehensive data governance, risk management and information assurance programs are also built into this framework, incorporating mechanisms and controls to protect sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII), payment card industry (PCI) information, protected health information (PHI) and criminal justice information (CJI), as set forth by the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), HIPAA and SOX acts, PCIDSS standard, FBI/CJIS/FDLE policy requirements, applicable record laws, and other regulations and guidelines A secure, practical, and efficient interoperability model for a smart city in a highly regulated environment
Our homegrown AI-powered Smart City Digital Twin platform merges the Coral Gables smart city hub public platform, the City’s Urban Analytics Artificial Intelligence (AI) Internet of Things (IoT) platform, citywide enterprise systems and open data, a 3D horizontal integration spatial computing platform with advanced photogrammetry and mapping, object modeling –buildings (BIM), realistic right-of-way (RoW) elements, trees, dynamic trolley visualization from fleet management systems, smart city technology infrastructure, parks and green areas,
streets/roads–; LiDAR photonics RoW StreetSmart and VRWorld point-cloud digital environments, county GIS/RoW/CIP infrastructure assets and projects, external HPC's, and AI-powered process automations. This City Operating System (City OS) architecture fosters real-time interoperability and connects the dots between all the city's enterprise systems and data domains to improve operational efficiencies and citizen access to digital services. It also allows for integration with building information models (BIM) and immersive mixed reality (XR) user experience (UX) navigation for operations, inspections, monitoring, and control.
VII. Strategic Project Portfolio Management Framework (fig 10-11, pg 55-56): from vision and planning to execution, the abovementioned management frameworks show how we leverage industrial engineering and best practices to keep the lights on and maintain a diverse and complex portfolio of infrastructure, technology, and services. To implement our smart city strategic plans, make things happen, and keep the wheels moving with continuous improvement and innovation, we also need effective project management, one of the key competencies to achieve our goals and our vision. We are a projectized organization and our team works together with our strategic partners on a large portfolio of strategic projects in multiple categories (new smart buildings, telecommunications infrastructure, fiber optics corridors, IoT networks, enterprise systems, citizen engagement and communication portals, mobile apps, public safety technology projects, smart city research collaboration initiatives, data portals, process improvement and standardization projects, and others), with governance, interoperability and cybersecurity requirements and best practices embedded in all projects and programs. We facilitate community involvement in all phases of projects, from pre-project research to execution and post-project assessment. At the end, every smart city project must be a strategic project that improves services and quality of life for our citizens.
VIII. Smart City Strategic Partnership, Research & Collaboration Model (fig 12, pg 56): CGIT has taken a synergetic and collaborative approach to smart city technology services, projects and continuous improvement programs, as an essential and effective way to execute our strategic plans, help others, conduct research, augment skills, add capacity, engage members of the smart city ecosystem, and remain competitive and innovative as an organization and as a team For our team, it is a continuous synergetic cycle that starts with sharing and communicating. This continuum has established a diverse portfolio of collaborative programs with leading organizations across sectors (science, academia, government, industry, business, and nonprofit/professional) and verticals (energy, transportation, telecommunications, utilities, education, healthcare) and has laid out a five-stage virtuous cycle in synchronization with our cyberinfrastructure, service delivery and project management frameworks. A virtuous cycle that helps us grow a sustainable digital ecosystem and connect the dots for collaborative innovation: 1. Share → 2. Learn → 3. Partner → 4. Collaborate → 5. Build Collective Value → Repeat.
Performance Excellence Plan:
Our strategic plan delivers cost efficiencies and fiscal responsibility while planning and managing technology resources for the City. CGIT works with the Finance Department to properly plan for capital improvements, operating budget requirements and resource allocation for ongoing and future needs, while improving budget management and planning procedures for efficiency and cost reduction. With Finance’s help, we have better aligned our capital projects and operating budget line items with the city’s strategic action plans and goals. During crises and emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of natural disasters, CGIT worked closely with Finance and the City’s leadership to implement necessary budget cuts in capital and operations to fiscally adjust to municipal revenue shortfalls during special conditions while maintaining high quality of services and business continuity of operations for our customers and our citizens.
CGIT has also applied a comprehensive set of cost saving strategies in OpEx and CapEx that have reduced cyberinfrastructure maintenance and refresh costs over multiple years, while expanding our scope of services, areas of responsibility, and operations. We have also developed funding strategies to expand and sustain our smart city technology infrastructure and research programs, including aligning our technology projects with capital infrastructure projects in city parks, roads, right of way, and buildings by establishing administrative process requirements and controls to make sure that every capital improvement project in the city undergoes a smart technology needs assessment (e.g.: Gartner’s Coral Gables case study on paper “Smart City Funding Models: It’s Time to Be Creative,” published by Gartner in 2019.) Our team has also worked together with other city departments and city leadership (Fire, Police, Finance, Economic Development, City Manager’s Office) and partner organizations in government, industry and academia applying for grant funding programs from federal/state/municipal agencies (NSF, DOC, DHS, DOE, FL-DEO, County) in diverse areas such as public safety technologies, resiliency, smart city and telecommunications infrastructure, economic recovery technology programs, and STEM research and education (smart energy, data science, AI, IoT, smart city data collaboration hubs, cyberinfrastructure, disaster resilience platforms.) Awarded grant funds from these agencies have been effectively utilized to upgrade City services such as 911 communications, emergency operation center (EOC) technologies and satellite communications, technology for small businesses impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, traffic optimization networks, Census 2020 outreach campaigns, traffic/energy AI optimization R&D project, smart city systems, and STEM education and internships.
CGIT Efficiency Benchmark Analysis - When comparing CGIT with Gartner’s 2024-25 industry benchmark metrics for Local Government agencies on three key metric benchmark indicators: IT Spending as a Percent of Operational Expense (%), IT Spending Per Employee ($), and IT Employees as a Percent of Total Employees (%), where lower is better, we find that CGIT is significantly below State and Local Government industry averages in spending and number of employees, in conjunction with other satisfactory balanced scorecard indicators in productivity, customer satisfaction, learning and innovation. Per our 2025 I.T. financial benchmark analysis report summary:
• CGIT spends 47% less as a ratio of the total organization’s operational expense than the gov’t industry average;
• CGIT spends 21% less per organization employee than the government industry average;
• CGIT has 63% less employees as a ratio of the total number of employees than the government industry average.
We have also established business metrics and balanced scorecards to measure our performance against annual goals and expectations, as well as government and industry benchmarks. Our team has kept all City technology systems and services operating with high availability and uptime (99.9+% avg. uptime -almost zero percent downtime since 2016 at the beginning of this plan), with overall adequate capacity and good levels of performance. We have promptly responded to emergencies and reestablished any affected services. We monitored our response times and service levels and addressed customer needs and requirements, with an emphasis on the areas that most needed improvement.
Our customer service scorecards show a customer satisfaction index of 4.9/5 in IT service requests. We have improved our customer service response times and overall department performance metrics, while listening to the voice of the customer, addressing gaps in a timely manner, and seizing opportunities for improvement (ASQ, IISE Coral Gables IT department case studies ) As part of our lean six sigma process improvement action plan, we collect customer metrics by implementing surveys, customer sentiment analytics, and other QA data gathering tools. Our team also analyzes the results of the biannual Coral Gables Community Surveys to identify opportunities to leverage innovation and technology to address pain points and service gaps impacting quality of life of our community.
One of our strategic focus areas is to build better communication channels and teamwork with all city departments and to facilitate citizen engagement. We conduct technology needs assessment and strategic planning meetings with each department to identify priorities; to focus our efforts on resolving the most important issues for the greater benefit of the organization and the citizens; and, to maximize cost-effectiveness and return on investment. We have also assigned internal IT liaisons to each city department to boost communication, customer service and response times. Together with city departments and interdepartmental IT steering committees we plan smarter and deliver results on time, within budget and aligned with the scope, and conduct in-depth technical and business assessments to address workforce training and awareness gaps and find the right technology that is cost-effective, compliant, and addresses the needs of the citizens and the organization. We also participate in citizen advisory boards and committees and communicate with members of the community to better understand the technological needs and collaborative ideas of our citizens, to improve the outreach of city technology services and initiatives and develop effective communication strategies. With the implementation of citizen portals and tools like the smart city hub, smart initiative collaborative portals, mobile apps, digital experience platforms, websites, messaging apps, social media sites, AI agents, citizen engagement programs, customer relationship management systems and digital surveys, we help the citizens communicate and collaborate more effectively with the City.
Citywide Business Process Improvement is a key part of our strategic plan. In alignment with our CGIT Quality Engineering Framework, we work on citywide process improvement and initiatives, implementing lean six sigma analysis and best practices to reduce waste and costs, solve problems, and improve efficiency and quality of service. We led a citywide quality training program training, coaching, and certifying 35 lean six sigma green belts across all city departments; led citywide six sigma black belt projects; and implemented standard operating procedures, operation plans, policies, best practices, and knowledge libraries to improve how we operate and manage our department and our resources. Our team also led the implementation of citywide Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), a digital platform with electronic document workflow for SOP governance, templates, systematic processes, and best practices as per the NIST Baldrige performance excellence framework and benchmarks. Because of these efforts, our team received a case study award in 2019 from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and their International Team Excellence Award (ITEA) program for our use of Quality 4.0, industrial engineering standards and best practices in accomplishing smart city I T performance metrics improvement in balanced scorecards.
Resilience, Agility, and Adaptability:
CGIT is a key component of the City’s emergency management and operation plans By improving and strengthening our business continuity plans and practices, we continue to assure resilience, security, quality and high availability of technology services and communications during emergency events and normal operations. Also, by leveraging engineering standards and best practices, our team has built and maintained an award-winning robust and resilient network infrastructure that provides high availability of mission-critical systems and communications for emergency operations, 911, first responders, and city services. This resilience has been tested during natural disasters like Hurricane Irma in 2017, which caused power and carrier service outages that affected more than 80% of the City. Because of these efforts, our team received an award in 2017 from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for our use of IEEE engineering standards in building smart city resiliency. Our team has implemented and applied numerous smart city technologies for emergency response at the City’s regional Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and works with emergency managers to leverage advanced tools and analytics during EOC activations to provide robust communications and timely/actionable information to first responders and policy makers. Some of those technologies include: digital twin platform, video analytics platforms, AV systems and videoconferencing tools, satellite systems, mobile computers and communication devices, Smart City Hub platform, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) interactive maps and Situational Awareness Dashboards, Urban Analytics (traffic, environmental, behavioral), software systems, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors: water and flooding sensors, hyper-local multi-sensor environmental stations installed at public safety facilities (wind speed anemometers, rainfall, temp/pressure/humidity, solar radiation); multimodal traffic sensors (vehicles, pedestrian), smart poles, crowdsourced traffic analytics; building health screening / temperature scanning and access control kiosks with facial recognition; Community Intelligence Center (CIC) cameras (CCTV, ALPR); UAS/Drones and RTMP servers, and other technologies The City of Coral Gables regional EOC and CIC centers serve Coral Gables and five other municipalities (South Miami, West Miami, Sweetwater, Pinecrest, Cutler Bay), besides University of Miami and Florida International University, with a total combined population impact of over 300,000 residents. We continue improving our network infrastructure and making it stronger and smarter as technology and standards evolve, and we also partner with citywide teams, academic researchers and philanthropic organizations implementing smart energy projects to improve energy resilience for the City’s mission-critical service facilities.
Public Safety is a key priority of ours. CGIT works together with the city’s public safety leadership, Police, Fire, and Problem-Solving citywide teams implementing advanced technology solutions and smart processes. These initiatives include Community Intelligence Centers, open source Intelligence, CCTV cameras, automated license plate readers, CCTV/ALPR/Speed trailers, computer vision and video analytics AI-powered systems; UAS/drones, crime data analytics and visualization, Telemedicine, Paperless/Electronic Patient Care process, and health technology solutions (testing and vaccination portals, data hubs, IoT sensor data analysis, situational awareness tools, business assistance portals, electronic surveys and citizen engagement tools, symptom diagnostic apps, telework and virtual meeting tools.) These are among the many innovative advancements that respond to incidents and crises, help prevent and fight crime; and improve safety and quality of life for residents, businesses, and visitors.
Crises response Technology Strategies – Agility and Adaptability: CGIT supports citywide technology needs during health crises like the coronavirus pandemic crisis, including: deploying hundreds of additional computers and mobile devices for telework and remote access; expanding the network capacity and cloud computing capabilities to support enterprise telework services; enabling additional virtual workspaces for projects and collaboration; enhancing anywhere/anytime mobile access to applications and documents; facilitating the implementation and providing technical support for virtual commission meetings where citizens and officials participate from multiple locations; leveraging the functionalities of scalable, flexible and secure cloud-based platforms and enterprise systems to maintain operational capacity and business continuity (Microsoft’s Coral Gables case study on article “Technology Powering a City During Turbulent Times”); providing onsite and remote technical support to city employees and first responders; configuring cashier/POS stations to be able to accept payments remotely; assisting citizens and businesses with technology-related needs; troubleshooting technical issues and systems outages; supporting citywide emergency management systems and technology services; providing quick technical solutions to multiple operational issues; developing hyper-local data hubs and portals for first responders, emergency managers, and Covid-19 testing registration, testing site operations and vaccination data (StateTech’s Coral Gables case study on article “8 Smart Cities to Watch in 2020”); participating with University of Miami, Florida International University, Miami-Dade Beacon Council Technology Committee, NIST GCTC, Tech-CARES, local municipalities and
other organizations in response technology task forces sharing resources, case studies, lessons learned and insight; collaborating with several organizations in government, industry and academia to enhance data visualization and analytics for emergency operations; maintaining critical communication platforms; working with the Economic Development department and strategic partners in industry, government and academia to provide technology workshops and technical assistance recovery programs for small and medium businesses impacted by the crisis; and many other support tasks. Our team helped our City and our community leverage technology, collaboration and innovation to remain active and productive, recover from the impact of those events, and thrive.
Cyberinfrastructure Plan:
We participate in the planning, design, and execution of current and future construction projects, including renovations, building automation, office relocations, new buildings, broadband corridors, and other important projects. CGIT involvement goes from analyzing technology requirements and associated provisioning costs at the early phases of the project and researching adequate smart building technology solutions in the industry, to engineering, implementing, and testing the technology infrastructure that helps deliver services and communications to the stakeholders We continue working with Public Works and other departments provisioning technology infrastructure for new buildings, renovations, and construction projects During recent years, our team designed, procured, engineered, project-managed, and deployed network infrastructure and telecommunications for several city construction projects, including: new public safety headquarter building, new Fire Stations (FS2 renovation, FSU, and FS4), 911 Communication Centers (primary and secondary PSAP), new IT Primary Datacenter / Network Headquarters and server rooms, new Emergency Operation Center, new Trolley building, new Development Services Center, Adult Activity Center, Passport Office, Streetscape Project, Fink Studio, Merrick House, Coral Gables Country Club, public parks, tennis courts, golf courses, smart parking facilities and garages, Mobility Hub, SCADA IP telemetry system upgrade; and several other infrastructure projects, facilitating communication and operations for departments and the public using those areas and facilities. New technology infrastructure and project management for these projects included fiber optics corridors, datacenters and network electronics, low voltage wiring, computer networks, audio and video systems, sensors and actuators, cybersecurity and physical security systems, new equipment, dispatch consoles, equipment moves, and other smart building provisioning. Our team periodically upgraded the City’s core and distribution computer network with faster, smarter, safer, greener, and more resilient backend electronics and cyberinfrastructure, as part of the reengineering and rebuilding of the City’s I T Primary Datacenter and Network Headquarters, and other capital projects and infrastructure refresh cycles Our team has also conducted research, authored papers, and executed use cases of Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS) for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) functions, to enable real-time sensing and visibility of city building structural/environmental conditions on the smart city hub platform
R&D and Innovation are also key drivers of our strategic plan. We work on multiple Smart City and eGov initiatives in the areas of sustainability, public safety, citizen engagement, transparency, business intelligence, business process reengineering, mobility, public transportation, smart parking, fleet management, emergency response, mobile applications, homegrown systems, and other government technology implementations that bring value, convenience, resilience, increased efficiencies, and improved customer service satisfaction citywide. We conduct result-oriented research pilots, field test operations, and demonstrate applications of exponential technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, drones, computer vision, connected/automated/autonomous vehicles, and predictive analytics in emergency management, public safety, and digital services scenarios. We join with the city’s leadership to present these Smart City initiatives through research papers, books, Smart City surveys and case studies, multiple conferences and events, STEM research groups, innovation work groups, conferences (UM, FIU, IEEE, IISE, NIST), several publications, events, boards, committees, town halls and Commission meetings.
CGIT established its Smart City Research Laboratory and GIS & IoT laboratories with internship programs in partnership with universities and colleges (UM, FIU, MDC, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Nova U, Barry U, Elon U, Syracuse U, STEM schools), with an active participation as of 2023 of more than 170 interns and mentees ranging from high school to undergrad, grad, PhD, and postdoc, working on impactful projects for our community. Our team also established partnerships via memoranda of understanding (MOU) with technology innovation organizations like Strata.AI, and worked with the Economic Development department developing the Gables TechTank initiative, where the City along with its partners facilitate the upskilling of professionals through training programs, to provide reliable, sustainable sources of technical talent, data, services, and innovative solutions to organizations located within the City of Coral Gables. Of the companies that responded to the City’s technical talent needs survey, almost 50% rated Cybersecurity, Data Science, AI and Machine Learning, and Full-Stack Development as essential skills. Through an MOU, 4Geeks Academy, TalentFarm, Beyond Academics, and our City team are collaborating to understand the tech needs of the business community, create syllabi to address the technical skills needed of the labor force and provide training with certificates and micro-credentials.
We follow a triple-helix model of innovation (government-industry-academia) by partnering with scientific research institutions like the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratories, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and City Innovate STIR Labs, industry innovators, and technology institutes and universities like UM, FIU, MIT, and UC Berkeley, conducting advanced research projects. Our CGIT team has taken a 360° collaborative approach to Smart City technology services and continuous improvement programs, augmenting skills, brainpower, and problem-solving capacity to conduct impactful research that addresses the needs of our community. Our entrepreneurial and experimental mindset, shaped during the industry's technological evolution, involves incorporating intelligent connected infrastructure (ICI), artificial intelligence (AI) and experimental approaches into public sector innovation. Working collaboratively, our team integrates seamlessly, breaking down silos to create a holistic approach to innovation. This practice has established a diverse portfolio of collaborative programs and centers of excellence with top organizations across sectors and industries, as stated above regarding our Smart City Strategic Partnership, Research and Collaboration Model (framework VIII)
As part of our R&D project portfolio, our collaboration with industry innovators led to the installation in Coral Gables in early 2021 of the first modular AI-powered smart city pole in North America. The project showcased the integration of aesthetic design –recently enhanced with our partnership with the Italian industrial design firm Pininfarina– with cutting-edge technology developed by aerospace engineers, reflecting our commitment to enhancing the city's visual appeal and technological capabilities while reducing the footprint of technology furniture in the right of way. Additionally, ongoing partnerships with NIST, PNNL and ARPA-E have resulted in case studies and projects focused on intelligent transportation and energy optimization. A project like AutonomIA, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E), allows our city to work in partnership with PNNL, UC Berkeley and industry innovators utilizing advanced technologies like digital twins, high performance computing, machine learning and AI for traffic optimization and emissions reduction. Also, a research project like the Coral Gables Resilient Energy System (RES), allows us to prototype smart microgrid distributed energy resources (DER) for Coral Gables public safety facilities in collaboration with University of Miami SimLab and Bloomberg Philanthropies. And AIDA/CORAL, our AI Digital Assistant developed in collaboration with MIT, WVU, City Innovate and UC Berkeley through a STIR Labs program funded by NSF, enhances user experience on our Smart City Hub platform. Our team works on those programs in alignment with internal operations, infrastructure, service delivery and project management frameworks to help us connect the dots for collaborative innovation, develop competitive strengths, and make a difference for the entire community.
We have implemented smart city infrastructure projects with internet of things (IoT) sensors, cyber-physical systems (CPS) and platforms to increase real-time visibility on environmental and urban variables such as traffic, parking, energy, water, air quality, sea and waterways level, and other applications, developing Smart Districts in Downtown and provisioning other areas. For the City’s Centennial, CGIT implemented a homegrown Smart City Hub public platform for open data and collaboration for a Beautiful and Smart City and is working on advanced tools such as augmented reality platforms that will deliver real-time, location-aware, history-and-culture-rich multimedia information to visitors and residents traversing the City and visiting landmarks, touristic, and commercial areas. By offering open data and application programming interfaces, and building collaboration with civic coders, academic professors, and students, CGIT is continually adding more value and applications to the City’s public platforms.
Those efforts have helped our city develop a community of excellence, a vibrant smart city ecosystem, and a robust and resilient smart city technology infrastructure and engineering framework throughout multiple innovation districts that provide hyper-connectivity, visibility, control and automation of city services. This infrastructure fosters quality of life improvements in Public Safety, mobility, energy efficiency, sustainability and accessibility of digital services, supported by a robust foundation of resilient high-speed communications/broadband –built on engineering standards and industry frameworks and best practices for security, fault-tolerance and automated failovers during hurricanes and other disasters. This digital reality urban fabric includes fiber optics corridors, wireless networks, public Wi-Fi, satellite communications, a complex layer of cyber-physical systems and IoT sensors (smart lights and smart lighting controllers, CCTV, ALPR, traffic and environmental sensors, and first-of-its-kind smart city AI-powered modular integrated poles), distributed clouds, AI and machine learning-powered predictive data analytics, a smart city hub, digital twin and real-time urban analytics IoT-AI public platform for citizens, first responders, traffic engineers, academic researchers, businesses and entrepreneurs. This infrastructure is currently being expanded to other smart/innovation districts in the South and North areas of the City and is being enhanced with additional capabilities such as interoperability with blockchain and mixed reality platforms.
Two of our strategic focus areas are Enterprise Systems and Horizontal Integration. We conducted a research study on Enterprise Systems, with the findings of nationwide research and recommendations by subject matter experts on government enterprise systems and horizontal integration within the organization’s functional areas. Our study provided substantial information, analysis and expertise that helped the city review the best available options and make an informed and sound decision during the evaluation process of new post-modern Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud Suites and Operation systems (ERP/EOS/EBC) that fit the organization’s functional requirements, budget planning, and culture of exceptional customer service. This study was presented to all city departments in 2017, and an executive steering committee was formed with the City’s leadership to start the implementation process. Our long- and short-term strategies in ERP/EOS/EBC included diverse areas such as core financial, supply chain management, e-permitting/electronic plan review, land management, facility/fleet/asset management, public safety, community recreation operations, human capital and workforce management, waste management, emergency management, customer relationship management, ubiquitous location-based data and GIS analytics and visualization that support the many business areas of the organization. Between 2017 and 2023, our team working together with several city departments completed the implementation of a new facility/asset management enterprise system, a full digitalization and inventory of city right-of-way assets (almost 300 miles of roads), a new community recreation system, a new electronic permit / enterprise land management and licensing system, a new 3D zoning system, a new smart waste management system, new customer relationship management systems, new digital experience platforms, new electronic document management systems, multiple public safety systems, and a new core financial, HR and supply chain cloud suite ERP, delivering customer-centric, data-driven features and functionalities, added value, convenience, mobility, process improvement and increased efficiencies.
These innovative projects and initiatives also have an economic impact in the City and the entire South Florida region. Businesses and workers are currently benefiting from the City’s smart initiatives (IoT, open data, public WiFi, cyberinfrastructure, mobile apps, and citizen services) in many ways. We work with the City’s Economic Development department, the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Improvement Districts, the International Affairs Council, Trade Offices and the Beacon Council promoting these services to new and existing businesses, startups and entrepreneurs that are considering investing in our City. Also, to continue building and enhancing these initiatives and to foster economic growth, our team submitted multiple proposals for smart city infrastructure expansion, to organizations like the State’s Enterprise Florida and Department of Economic Opportunity, the County’s SMART transportation plan, U.S. DOC, DOE and DHS, and various agencies and funding opportunities, with comprehensive engineering design, business case value proposition, and city and regional economic impact analysis
Outreach, Communication, Learning and Collaboration:
To foster learning, collaboration and digital adoption, our smart city outreach and communication plan deploys several strategies, including i. Developing public communication material such as bulletins, success stories, videos, webinars, posters, flyers, brochures, AR apps, media kits, articles, and publications; ii. Using diverse media outlets like digital media, broadcasting, podcasts, virtual sessions, printed publications, digital libraries, and physical distribution; iii. Participating and presenting at collaborative events such as government/academia/industry conferences, expos, townhalls, symposia, workshops, summits, hackathons, forums, roundtable discussions, and others; iv. Submitting applications to awards and competitions; v. Teaching and presenting at university programs, classes, guest lectures and other education spaces; vi. Joining Think Tanks and volunteering on community-impact STEM Initiatives; and vii. Authoring and publishing research papers. As part of these efforts:
1. Our team has been invited to present the Coral Gables smart city, technology and innovation initiatives at multiple events nationwide, participating as speakers, exhibitors, MC’s, and often as the host organization: Cybersecurity Trends conference, eMerge Americas, GIS events, Smart Cities Connect, UM Smart Cities conference, Smart Cities Council’s Smart City Week and Innovation Summits, Miami Tech Summit, Miami-Dade County Best Practices Conference, FLGISA Conference, Government Innovation Awards, Defense TechConnect, IEEE Coral Gables Smart City webinars, IEEE engineering conferences, U.S. Department of State Summit of the Americas and Atlantic Council summit, Institute of Transportation Engineers ITE annual conference, Constructing the Future of Urban Technology roundtable, IISE annual conference, Smart City Expo World Congress, One Community One Goal, Regional Climate summit, Unbound Miami, Connected Cities summit, NIST GCTC Smart Cities Expo and Smart Cities Strategic Planning workshops, U.S.-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership Symposium, Cities Today Institute Leadership Forum, Women in Technology International conference, Secure Miami FIU conference, UM Big Data conference, ASQ World Conference on Quality & Improvement, Cisco Live, MIT South Florida event, Smart City Expo & Tomorrow.City USA, Tech SMART BIM summit, FL League of Cities annual conference, IT Expo / Smart City Event / IoT Evolution summit, .NEXT conference, Consumer Electronics Show, Open Data event, Smart City Roadshow, MDBC-TC events, ASPA SoFL Best Practices conference, GSX+ Summit, Smart City Expo Miami, FLGISA/FIU cybersecurity events, Singularity University AI summit, Public Sector Innovation conference, NIST Cybersecurity Symposium for Smart Cities, NIST/NTIA Smart Regions Workshop, Fiber Broadband Association event, and others
2. Multiple publications such as Forbes, Smart & Resilient, GovTech & eRepublic, State Tech Magazine, ASPA PA Times, CIO Review Magazine, Florida Engineering Society journal, Kurrant Insights, ISE Magazine, IEEE Spectrum & The Institute/Standards University Magazines, ArcNews, ASQ Quality Progress, Smart Cities Dive, Harvard University library, APA Technology Newsletter, Smart Cities World, ICMA Books, Coral Gables Magazine, Miami Today News, Bloomberg, Innovate Miami book, Broadband Communities Magazine, Gartner research papers, IoT News, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) books, NIST Labs, City Beautiful Magazine, Microsoft tech blog, Consumer Technology Association, academic books, and National League of Cities media have published articles and case studies about the Coral Gables technology initiatives, helping us connect with our constituents, colleagues, businesses and professional communities, while also expanding the public’s adoption of City technology services.
3. CGIT staff has authored and submitted papers and articles to professional publications, including engineering research papers for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE); smart city articles for Government CIO Outlook Magazine and CIO Review Magazine, crisis response technology papers for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) GCTC and CPAC thinktanks, smart city articles for the American Planning Association (APA), for the launch of One Water Academy on Earth Day 2020, and for the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) PA Times special editions, and GIS papers for professional journals. CGIT staff has also co-authored several research papers in collaboration with academic researchers from UM and FIU, in subject matter areas of electrical engineering, quality engineering, GIS, IoT, resilience, emergency/crises management technology use cases, and data science.
4. CGIT staff has contributed with content writing and expertise for technology books and journals; and have worked with ISO, IEC and IEEE developing international standards for engineering and technology. Our CGIT team works together with the City’s Office of Communication, the Economic Development Department, Gables TechTank STEM incubator partners, marketing teams and City boards, councils and committees on communicating and promoting the City’s technology services and its competitive advantage as a regional innovation hub to create high-skilled jobs and attract visitors, businesses, investment, talent, and entrepreneurs.
5. External Partnerships, Community Volunteering, and Collaboration – In alignment with our Smart City Strategic Partnership, Research and Collaboration model (fig. 12), we continue seeking, developing, and leveraging strategic partnerships with professional organizations in academia, government, and the industry, that augment our skillset and research capabilities, open new opportunities for learning and communicating, and add value and capacity for projects, initiatives, and civic good. These partnerships and community volunteering in various leadership capacities are key to the execution of our strategic plan. Some of the organizations we are actively collaborating with are: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST/DOC + DHS/NTIA/NSF Global City Teams Challenge smart cities federal program; volunteering as co-chair of the NIST GCTC Data and Smart Buildings Superclusters), National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA: broadband, digital inclusion, and smart regions programs, volunteering as member of the BroadbandUSA Digital Inclusion Leadership Network - DILN), University of Miami (UM: Coral Gables Smart City Solutions competition, smart energy microgrid research for public safety buildings, civic engagement & GIS initiatives, crime analysis, traffic and mobility technology, data science and supercomputing, business technology, STEM research proposals to NSF, 5G & XR research pilots, internships, innovation thinktank, hackathons), Florida International University (FIU: waterway IoT/sensors, digital libraries, internships, innovation thinktank, cybersecurity and IoT labs, training, GIS, STEM research proposals, MSEM and MSIoT programs), Miami Dade College (MDC: internships, innovation thinktank, AI Center collaboration), World Business Angel Investment Forum (WBAF: Miami Board of Directors membership and tech startup funding programs), International City/County Management Association (ICMA: smart city case studies and publications), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE: engineering standards, smart city research, case studies, publications, competitions and awards), the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE: research papers, events, publications), Florida Engineering Society (FES: volunteering as judge at the Future Cities Competition and on engineering mentorships, webinars), National League of Cities (NLC: smart city case studies, events, publications), American Society for Quality (ASQ: process improvement, lean six sigma projects, case studies, competitions), U.S. DOE and Pacific Northwest national Laboratory (PNNL), UC Berkeley, MIT, Standford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Waze (CCP: Connected Citizens Program), Google partnership (digital literacy, small business economic recovery programs), Bloomberg Philanthropies (city challenge project prototyping), Smart Cities Council, Center for Digital Government, South Florida Digital Alliance (SFDA: internships, learning centers), business organizations such as Miami-Dade Beacon Council (MDBC: member of the Technology Committee and the 1MPACT economic recovery taskforce), Chambers of Commerce, Trade Commissions, Business Improvement District; Cities Today Institute (CTI: City Leadership Forum think tank); City Innovate STIR Labs, DataGovs smart region collaborative (City of Miami, Miami-Dade County, Code for South Florida, Microsoft Philanthropies Office of Civic Innovation, GitHub) and GIS data sharing MOUs; CTIA, IoTC, sister cities, Gables TechTank, and other STEM collaborations. CGIT also collaborated with IEEE and NIST in the development of an engineering standard for smart cities planning, and a framework for smart cities and communities, respectively. We also provide technology support for regional and local events such as the Super Bowl LIV Committee, 4th of July, Tree Lighting, Census 2020, Carnival on the Mile, and other events, and partner with regional initiatives such as Friends of the Underline to assist in the development of a technology corridor along the length of the project. In 2020, City of Coral Gables was selected as one of the 17 public agencies to be part of the inaugural STIR Labs program funded by National Science Foundation (NSF). STIR Labs is a ground-breaking program transforming government-academic collaboration. Our City team is part of a cohort that works closely with prestigious academic institutions tackling research needs to address community issues surrounding AI-empowered decisions/solutions, transportation, emergency management, economic recovery, urban planning, resilience, and sustainability, among others. Research challenges include applied AI and machine learning for predictive analytics and other solutions to improve citizen services, and open data platforms for decisionmakers and first responders.
Human Capital and Team Success Plan:
Our team development plan includes: i. Improving the skillset of our personnel with value-driven, customerfocused and career-oriented training; using a combination of in-house cross-training, hands-on learning, certification paths and requirements, remote/off-site training on relevant technologies, customer service and managerial courses, awareness campaigns, degree-seeking education, online/virtual classes, value-adding events, book reading groups, CGIT full-team brainstorming sessions (strategic planning, process improvement, project management, emergency management/resilience, cybersecurity, drills and tabletop test exercises), and other tools; ii. Implementing leadership best practices to improve employee morale, engagement, and productivity. We have incorporated all the members of our team into our innovation and process improvement programs, listening to their ideas and giving them the opportunity to put their ideas into practice. We have encouraged our team to smartly work together and to diligently achieve our goals, instilling a customer-centric approach on what they do, embracing city values of ethics and excellence, and motivating them to achieve their own potential and career goals.
Team maturity - Our team members have collectively earned a comprehensive set of qualifications, licenses and certifications in technology, policy, cybersecurity, engineering, AI, data science, business analysis, standards & best practices, business administration, quality assurance, network and systems, GIS, blockchain, technical education, service management, office automation and other areas. CGIT has also received multiple awards and recognition over the past ten years, including the Intelligent Community Full Certification, first place nationwide in the 2018 Digital Cities Awards, first place nationwide in the 2023 Government Experience Awards, 2022 Smart Cities Innovation Excellence Award, 2022 IEEE Smart Cities Jury Award, 2020, 2023 & 2024 Smart City Awards in urban infrastructure, first place U.S. organization in the 2019 & 2020 Open Cities Index, world’s 2023 & 2024 Top 7 Intelligent Community, named by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and Quality Progress (QP) Magazine as one of ten top performing teams from around the world in the 2019 International Team Excellence Award (ITEA), an ASQ ITEA Case Study Award, one Employee of the Year and ten Employee of the Month awards, commendations from city leadership and multiple organizations, smart city case study recognitions from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), co-chair appointments to the NIST GCTC Superclusters, the CTI City Leadership Forum (CLF) and the World Business Angel Investment Forum (WBAF Miami BOD); senior memberships from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), IEEE Smart City World Standards Award, Champion City in the Bloomberg Philanthropies U.S. challenge, named to 8 Smart Cities to Watch in 2020, 2021 Gartner’s Eye on Innovation recognition, named to the list of 2020 government IT influencers, LocalSmart City Executive of the Year, CIO of the Year, 2021 Digital Disruptor and 2023 Sustainable Technology Innovator, ASQ approval of CGIT six sigma black belt projects, Best Conceptual Design at the University of Miami’s Smart Cities conference, CISO awards, CIO summit governing bodies membership; speakers at national and international STEM conferences, workforce/talent development awards, 5/10/15/20/25 staff years of service pins, among other recognition. Our staff has also received a substantial amount of positive feedback as well as constructive recommendations from our customers and our leaders, which are part of our input for continuous improvement. Our strategic plan includes improving teamwork, productivity, and communication within IT functional areas, to reach a more mature team performance level and to continually strive for excellence.
Moving Forward with Clarity of Vision:
We engage in long-run strategic planning for the next ten years and the forecasted future, with a vision of excellence, sustainability, and innovation in technology services for the city and its constituents. We have been planning for current, foreseen, and disrupting challenges in the dynamic urban environment of modern post-digital smart cities, including emerging and exponential technologies, increased citizen participation; digital disruptors such as artificial intelligence, cyber-risks, cloud computing, mobile systems, big data, robotics, social networks, blockchain, Web3, and IoT; rapid growth in service demand, enterprise digitalization acceleration needs and required upgrades and enhancements of current services, enterprise systems, and cyberinfrastructure.
We continue looking inward and outward to assess our own strategies, policies, processes, and services; compare ourselves with industry excellence benchmarks, standards, and best practices; identify gaps and opportunities for improvement; develop and execute agile action plans to address our findings; and align ourselves with the city’s strategic plans, goals, vision, mission, and core values. We work with internal and external auditors, as well as government, industry and academia subject matter experts and professional organizations to guide us in our journey of continuous learning and improvement We have learned many lessons along the way, and we have promptly corrected course and re-envisioned strategies when needed, without hesitation to challenge pre-existing processes, disrupt antiquated or ineffective paradigms, and make necessary adjustments and undergo positive transformations to remain agile, adaptable and on-mission We continue enabling our organization to be digitally adaptable, agile, flexible, and creative to navigate disruption and discontinuity during transformative times, and during unpredictable/unknown/uncharted scenarios, including the digital acceleration and supply chain disruption observed across sectors, markets, and industries over the past four years Despite past crises and natural disasters and their big impact on organizations and communities, the technology outlook has always remained optimist; largely by increased digital maturity, technology adoption and digital market/trend posture correction across the board. We have experienced how those challenges have made our organization more resilient, adaptable, and mature from a digital capability standpoint.
Our bimodal strategic plan is designed to be practical, actionable, and comprehensive, and to simultaneously achieve business continuity, business composability, and business transformation. The mantra of our plan is:
• Keep the lights on: business continuity, value streaming, service delivery, institutional resilience.
• Keep the customers happy: listen to the voice of the customer; focus on customer service and satisfaction.
• Keep the wheels moving: effective and successful project and program management; continuous progress.
• Keep the team sharp: readiness, agility, high competency, productivity, efficiency, morale, and work ethics.
• Get things done: achieve strategic goals and objectives, execute successfully, learn and win fast, deliver results.
For the past years of execution of our innovation and technology strategic plan, our team has adopted a list of action items from industry insight and best practices to work with all city departments to continue improving our digital maturity and keeping the accelerated momentum in digital transformation. This action plan includes:
• Adapt winning strategies to anticipate consumer trends and pivot existing cyberinfrastructure architecture to deliver quick wins with tangible outcomes, high-ROI, trust, and impact; achieve the right equilibrium between digital/traditional service delivery models; scale up by leveraging force multipliers to sustain momentum and gains in digital culture; foster agile/flexible business composability and accelerate citywide digital optimization.
• Prioritize technology investments and activities with commonsense and a value-driven pragmatic approach; reorganize/redirect resources to optimize ROI; drive a competitive edge by creating innovation ecosystem strategies; continue adopting a human-centered approach with cross-functional teams across sectors and industries to design better solutions; align the outcomes of smart city programs with holistic KPI’s
• Ignite and catalyze innovation across the enterprise; assess current technology trends and hype cycles and their intersection with our City’s mission impacts, citizen services and operations; continue leveraging hyperautomation and AI for decision intelligence; reevaluate our previous business cases and revamp digital business capabilities; leverage civic innovation labs to develop new service models and value offerings.
• Stay positive, humble, and curious as a team; continue fostering a team success and abundance mentality; continue championing and cheerleading the innovative initiatives and accomplishments of our City –in alignment with community-focused outcomes and the systematic execution of the City’s NIST Baldrige Community of Excellence framework; keep building value, trust and engagement for a post-digital smart city
For the past 10 years, our team has been at the forefront of value driven, high-ROI AI-powered civic innovation, with many impactful AI use cases that boost citywide operational efficiencies and improve citizen services and quality of life. Our AI-powered infrastructure assists decision making with a mix of Generative AI, Machine Vision, and Human Intelligence for data-powered decisions with human oversight and smart governance, risk management controls and AI policies. We scale strategically aligned AI solutions across the enterprise with the right multiagent architecture and data models that assure the quality, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of cross-functional AI-driven solutions; focusing on commonsense use cases that unlock enterprise agility and resilience. We have also enhanced our business-critical cybersecurity strategies to address agentic AI, postquantum risks, and regulatory complexity.
Our smart city journey has taken us to these pivotal times with a high level of digital maturity, strong team capabilities, a robust infrastructure, impactful community programs and tangible outcomes that built trust and helped us eliminate technical debt across enterprise and foster innovation and economic growth in our city. In many ways, this journey has also helped our team prepare to confront and overcome big challenges along the way. The obvious: our City’s pre-existing scalable cloud environments with high capacity and productivity tools, resilient highspeed networks, systems and telecommunications, a mobile workforce, and other cyberinfrastructure facilitated the transition to a new normal of hyperconnectivity, automation, telework and virtual meetings. Besides the obvious: our smart city initiatives have also made us more agile, adaptable, and resilient; have made us more creative, aware, sustainable, and resourceful; and have given us amazing partnerships with innovators in academia, government, industry, business and nonprofit organizations; that helped us provide agile and effective solutions and response actions to the challenges faced in recent years, while helping us prepare for the future as well.
We have cultivated a diverse team with multidisciplinary expertise ranging from fiber optic installation to fullstack development and data science. Our collaboration with city leadership and all municipal functions, coupled with partnerships with academia and industry, positions us in varying roles and capacities sometimes as a research laboratory, as a systems integrator, as a general contractor, as an incident response team, as an SME consulting firm, or as a thinktank of strategic futurist advisors serving all city departments; capable of designing, engineering, building, operating, and maintaining a complex infrastructure and fulfilling high demand products and services with quality assurance and visionary insight. At the same time when we focus on resiliency and business continuity –keeping the lights on–, we are also transforming the business and the organization with continuous improvement and innovation –keeping the wheels moving and the team sharp–; and growing a vibrant smart city ecosystem.
CGIT leverages strategic partnerships, research collaborations, and an entrepreneurial mindset to address complex challenges and improve the quality of life for our community. Our commitment to innovation, continuous improvement, education, and collaboration has garnered widespread recognition and numerous awards, solidifying our position at the forefront of civic innovation. Moving forward on that proven path, our team will continue applying science, collaboration, and experimentation to address our community’s most pressing needs and priorities with co-creative solutions. To help inform and engage citizens and ecosystem stakeholders in these exciting efforts, we will continue providing opportunities for collaboration and in-depth insights into our ongoing initiatives in the Coral Gables Smart City Digital Library and our Innovation and Technology Bulletin
Our team has worked with resolution and optimism to achieve major milestones, overcome challenges, and improve quality-of-life key performance indicators for our community; and we are excited about the new endeavors, objectives, and opportunities ahead. We look forward to continuing developing and improving our team, our leadership practices, and our department’s performance to the highest expectations of the city and its constituents; and to continuing working with our smart city ecosystem stakeholders accelerating innovation and achieving our city’s strategic goals in 2026 and beyond. We’ve just started, and the future is bright, for we are collaborating on a local, regional, national, and international scale to help our communities innovate and thrive.
Raimundo Rodulfo, P.E., PMP, MSEM SMIEEE, ITIL, PCIP, CSSBB Chief Innovation Officer / Director of Innovation & Technology
www.coralgables.com/ITDocs www.CoralGables.AI
Overall Plan Objectives:
• Provide a high quality of service for internal and external customers and stakeholders by pursuing a level of excellent customer service. Improve quality of life, sustainability, resilience, and livability in our City.
• Continuous improvement of citywide operations, maintenance, research and development practices through standardization, innovation, automation, citywide lean six sigma process improvement, NIST Baldrige journey to performance excellence, and optimization of citywide I.T. processes and infrastructure.
• Provide the right technology solutions to ongoing and new requirements and challenges from internal and external customers and stakeholders. Bring value to the City and its constituents by leveraging technology, imagination, and creativity to achieve the City’s vision and goals.
• Save costs and cut waste in infrastructure, services, operations, energy use, carbon footprint, and maintenance overhead.
• Leverage existing and emerging innovative technologies and skillsets to increase efficiency for the entire City, and advance Smart City programs with sustainable use of resources, innovation, citizen engagement, excellent public safety services and smart technologies for advanced and responsive citizen services.
• Build and provide adequate infrastructure resources and capacity for existing services and applications. Provision for planned enhancements, projected growth, demand forecast and foreseeable/visionary future.
• Improve and guarantee resilience, security, digital workforce capabilities, quality assurance and high availability of services during emergency events and crises as well as during normal operations.
• Guarantee compliance with federal, state, county, city and industry standards, best practices, rules, and regulations for information management, security and public safety, sustainability and environmental conservation, financial regulations, government controls, and any other applicable area of compliance.
• Build and maintain a strong and cohesive team of Innovation and Technology professionals with high standards of responsiveness, integrity, dedication, competency, skillset, expertise, leadership, customer service, loyalty, innovation, accountability, work ethics, collaboration, and accessibility. A successful team that is focused on learning, innovation, smart work, and exceptional customer service in a fiscally prudent manner. Enable those on the team we lead to reach and fulfill their own potential and goals.
• Advance the I&T Department’s Mission: “To provide the City of Coral Gables with reliable and sustainable technical services and innovative smart city solutions that bring value to the organization and its constituents and enhance business processes and effectiveness for all departments” in alignment with the City’s vision of a “World-class city with a hometown feel”, City values, mission, goals, and objectives.
Strategic Focus Areas:
• Sustainability, Resilience, Workability, and Livability.
• Agility and Adaptability.
• Innovation Ecosystem. Smart City roadmap. Smart districts development. Smart City Research Laboratory.
• Customer satisfaction and quality of service. Citizen engagement. User total experience. Inclusion, digital accessibility, transparency, and digital equity. Strategic partnerships. Public outreach. Civic trust.
• Business process improvements citywide. Standardization, SOPs, repeatability. Improve KPIs, efficiency benchmarking, business metrics, and balanced scorecards. Effective project management, business analysis, IT operations, ITAM. Cost efficiencies, fiscal responsibility Revenue opportunities, economic sustainability.
• Public Safety technology projects, problem-solving initiatives and process improvement.
• Enterprise Systems interoperability supported by spatial/GIS data visualization, metrics, and analytics.
• Economic growth and development through smart city initiatives and innovation Enabling local business and workforce digitally. Workforce development, digital literacy, tech talent, digital inclusion
• Emergency Management, Resilience and Business Continuity. Information Assurance and Security.
• Technical and business process assessments and gap-fit for all City departments. Strategic alignment.
• Data Science, AI, data-driven intelligence Mobility. Telework/Telepresence.
• Building better communication channels and teamwork with all city departments. Citywide tech training.
• Planning and provisioning technology infrastructure for city services and capital projects. Scalability.
• Team development. Skillset. Training. Leadership. Performance Excellence.
CGIT Strategic Action Plans - Aligned with City Vision, Mission, and Strategic Goals:
• Action Plan 4.1-1 (City Goal 4) - Citywide Horizontal Integration of Enterprise Systems, Dashboards (ACHIEVED)
• Action Plan 4.1-2 (City Goal 4) – Citywide Paperless Processes and Digital Efficiencies (COMPLETED)
o Finance/HR/SCM Cloud Suite ERP (Infor Cloud Suite)
o Land Management/e-Permitting System (EnerGov Tyler EPL, Gridics) and Development Services Center building technology. Electronic Plan Review.
o Asset Management and Facility Portfolio Management (OpenGov/Cartegraph, Cyclomedia LiDAR)
o Trolley Fleet Management system upgrade | Fleet Management systems: Assetworks, WBC
o Community Recreation and Classes Enterprise System (Vermont Systems RecTrac)
o Enterprise GIS Platform / Electronic Document Management System
o Smart City Hub + Urban Analytics AI/IoT + Digital Twin platforms
o Waste Management electronic process (Rubicon), improve efficiencies and interoperability
o New City Website/DXP (Drupal) - improve citizen digital experience
o New City Mobile App / CRM platform (Salesforce 311), state-of-the-art mobile DXP with notifications, AI chatbot, integration with all city apps, modern CRM with automated workflows
o Police and Fire Priority Dispatch (ProQA) / CAD&RMS CloudSuite System (Mark43) to improve Police/Fire/911 communication, call taking, dispatch, operations, incident response, digital capabilities.
• Action Plan 4.2-3 (City Goal 4) – Optimize Digital Systems and Processes (Builds on 4.1-2 Accomplishments)
• Action Plan 4.1-3 (City Goal 4) – Smart and Connected Districts, Buildings and Facilities (COMPLETED)
o Expansion of smart districts – broadband/digital inclusion, fiber optics corridors, public Wi-Fi networks, wireless P2P/P2MP gigabit networks, smart poles/IoT traffic/safety/camera/environmental sensors –impact on quality of life: mobility, public safety, digital inclusion, and high-speed connectivity (telehealth, tele-ed, telework, MaaS, V2E), foster innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation, economic growth Provide the right technology in the smart district areas to add resilience to the city’s network while yielding added value to Public Safety commanders, municipal managers, citizens, and stakeholders.
o New Buildings construction and renovation projects with technology infrastructure provisioning and smart building service capabilities: PFHQ + 911 ComCtr + EOC & CIC, Development Services Center, Coral Gables Country Club, PG7, FS4, Mobility Hub; City Hall renovation, Fink Studio, AAC, FS2 renovation and Trolley Depot - value-adding, safer, greener, resilient, smarter, functional infrastructure for public services.
• Action Plan 4.1-4 (City Goal 4) – Smart Districts Broadband Expansion Phases 5-South & 6-North (After 4.1-3)
• Action Plan 4.2-1 (City Goals 2, 4) – Enterprise Standard Operating Procedure Library & System
• Action Plan 4.2-2 (City Goals 1, 2, 4) – Citywide Process Improvement & Training (ACHIEVED)
• Action Plan 6.1-1 (City Goal 6) – Maintain Enterprise Systems Uptime Rate of 99.9+% SLA (ACHIEVED)
CGIT Strategic Action Plan Alignment with City of Coral Gables Strategic Management Goals & Objectives:
• Alignment with NIST Baldrige Framework of Excellence Journey Strategic Management Plan:
o Goal 1: Provide exceptional service that meet or exceeds the requirements and expectations of our community
• Objective 1.1 - Attain world-class performance levels in overall community satisfaction with City services.
o Goal 2 - To be the organization of choice by attracting, training, and retaining a competent and cohesive workforce.
• Objective 2.1 - Ensure sufficient workforce capacity and capability to deliver higher quality results.
• Objective 2.2 - Attain world-class levels of performance in workforce satisfaction & engagement.
• Objective 2.3 - Develop and implement a comprehensive staff development program to ensure appropriate workforce training, opportunities, & leadership skills.
o Goal 4 - Optimize City processes and operations to provide cost-effective services that efficiently utilize City resources.
▪ Objective 4.1 - Enhance the effectiveness of key City processes.
▪ Objective 4.2 - Increase the efficiency of key resource utilization processes.
o Goal 6 - Provide exceptional services that enhance local and global environmental quality, enrich our local economy, and strengthen the health and well-being of residents, businesses, and visitors.
▪ Objective 6.1 - Increase the resiliency of the city.
• Alignment with City Commission Strategic Priorities:
o Transparency: Explore ways to make city information and content easily accessible on the city website
o Environmental Stewardship: a more sustainable city, reduce our carbon footprint, reduce energy use.
o Customer-Focused Service: digitalizing permitting services; Make city website more user friendly.
o Trailblazing with Technology: Enhance our city’s technology infrastructure to support our city’s smart initiatives and improve communication with the Coral Gables community; Foster a culture of innovation and collaboration; Provide all departments with the tools and training needed to adopt and implement the latest technology; Making City’s Information Technology Initiatives easy to understand by all age groups with an effective communication campaign; Supporting the City’s mobile application to consistently send out information alerts and make it accessible to a larger network of followers; Continue to invest in IT Smart City Hub initiatives that aim to bring transparency, convenience and better quality of service to residents; Leverage AI to improve efficiency, enhance public services, optimize resources; Study feasibility of partnering with others to launch a telecommunications satellite for redundant cell and internet service, educational opportunities, and space research as an economic driver; Study feasibility of accepting Cryptocurrency as payment for city services.
o Education: Promote educational excellence, STEM programs, students’ learning across multiple disciplines.
CGIT Strategic Action Plan Alignment with United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
• Our Smart City Projects and Strategic Action Plans align with the UN SDGs, including but not limited to:
o SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being
o SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation; SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
o SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth; SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
o SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities; SDG 17: Partnerships
Alignment with Community and Stakeholder Surveys Results Analysis, Needs and Priorities:
• Coral Gables Community Surveys (2023, 2021) - strategic action plan to address gaps and pain points:
o Electronic Permitting and Digital Processes: Continue enhancing and improving the electronic permit system (Tyler EPL / EnerGov); e.g.: implement Decision Engine UX improvement and AI agents and digital assistants, enhance integrations with GIS routing and mapping and automated workflows; improve UX.
o Traffic, Mobility, Transportation and Parking: Continue leveraging smart city technologies to help the Parking and Mobility department and the Public Works department improve Traffic flow on major streets, Ease of public parking, and Ease of travel by public transportation. AutonomIA AI-assisted traffic system.
o Housing Needs: Continue developing data analytics and GIS solutions that help the Economic Development department promote opportunities to meet Housing needs. CGIT Smart City Research Lab projects.
o Sidewalk Maintenance: Leverage GIS & Asset Management enterprise systems (e.g.: OpenGov/Cartegraph electronic processes, NCTech/StreetSmart LiDAR point-cloud digital twin) and horizontal integration.
o Government Openness and Transparency, Honesty, Communications: Leverage the Smart City Hub, new City Website and DXP, City apps and CRM, Digital Twin public platform. CGIT Smart City Research Lab.
o Land Use and Planning: Leverage GIS and Land Management enterprise systems (e.g.: EPL/EnerGov, Forerunner and Gridics electronic processes), smart city hub, and horizontal integration.
o Government Acting in Best Interest of Community: Alignment with IT quality of life and citizen-centric strategies and initiatives. AI public sentiment analytics. Digital communication tools. Gables TechTank.
o Street Lighting: Smart city technology infrastructure projects: smart districts, smart lighting, IoT systems, smart city poles and urban analytics AI platforms (Ekin, Cimcon, Quantela, Viper Networks, etc.)
o New Development Quality: Smart districts and smart buildings projects and initiatives, GIS and Land Management enterprise systems (e.g.: EPL/EnerGov & Gridics electronic processes) horizontal integration.
o Street Repair: Leverage GIS and Asset Management enterprise systems (e.g.: OpenGov/Cartegraph electronic processes, NCTech / StreetSmart LiDAR point-cloud digital twin, etc.) and horizontal integration
o Planned Residential Growth: Smart districts projects, GIS, Concurrency and Land Management enterprise systems, smart city hub, horizontal integration, Concurrency system.
o City's Overall Direction: CGIT teamwork and alignment with City's leadership and City strategic management plan, Innovation and Technology strategic plan, horizontal integration, CGIT citizen-focused strategies, CGIT strategic management frameworks. Gables TechTank incubator and CGIT Research Lab.
o Paths and Trails Availability: GIS and Asset Management enterprise systems (e.g.: OpenGov/Cartegraph electronic processes, NCTech, StreetSmart) and horizontal integration. Smart city hub apps. City apps.
• Executive Summary of Recommendations from Department Heads, CGIT Managers and the Entire CGIT Staff Team programs and opportunities for improvement and innovation identified during brainstorming and design thinking sessions with all the employees of the Innovation and Technology Department –informed by the responses received from internal surveys sent to all CGIT staff and all department heads in the City, and technology needs assessments with IT steering committees Affinity Grouping of recommendations (most of them already adopted, started, and set in motion):
1. Training
a. Assess current citywide trained staff population. Customer service training refresher.
b. Implement a training checklist that will be required during hiring/onboarding process.
c. Maximize the use of existing/available tools: Percipio/SkillSoft LMS, CBT Nuggets, complimentary/included by technology providers, MITx, Coursera, etc.
d. Training end users on best practices with file naming and storing. Training on collaboration tools.
e. Additional onboarding user training and training materials: training package (videos, documents, etc.) for new employees, handoff from old/existing staff. Foster better understanding of enterprise systems.
f. Internal IT training for new software for more than one IT member per division.
g. Procurement training for IT staff. Budget for outsourced training.
2. Team Building
a. Better communication between and within CGIT divisions
b. Improve/solidify staff investment in IT outcomes, provide progressive responsibility of CGIT operations.
c. Internal mentorship. Provide regular, positive/constructive feedback on individual strengths and opportunities for improvement Recurring cross-training for all IT staff on troubleshooting procedures.
d. Cultivate an environment of learning and discovery that empowers staff, interns, partners, and collaborators Ask for people’s ideas and feedback and their best effort in daily activity.
e. Continually test and apply newly discovered best practices to existing systems and models
f. Hold quarterly team gatherings to celebrate accomplishments by divisions and individuals Acknowledge and support the efforts of others inside and outside the organization; acknowledge staff success verbally and in writing. Make the team stronger by having events out of the office
3.
IT Processes
a. Better communication with Tier-2 IT support, and via Internal inter-divisional meetings
b. Respond to tickets in a timelier manner; lower response/resolution times.
c. Provide more licenses of Project Management SaaS to track projects
d. Include a summary of service requests in follow-up emails
e. Expand knowledge library from service requests and incident solutions outcomes; improve workflow and data discovery solutions. Improve IT ticket system UX / user friendliness and provide instruction video.
f. Deploy more laptops and tablets (mobile workforce) for all computer users.
g. Improve IT stores and equipment warehousing to automatically track and sense valuable and consumable IT stock using RFID and IoT to support chain of custody.
h. Liquidate medium/high value ICT equipment via Procurement procedures and up to ITAM best practices.
4. Enterprise Systems, Cyberinfrastructure, and City Business Processes
a. Communicate effectively between different departments to ensure the timeline remains on schedule for strategic/large projects (e.g.: enterprise systems, smart districts, new buildings)
b. Complete the new Website/DXP project (Drupal) and City CRM Mobile App (Salesforce) (DONE)
c. Leverage OpenGov/Cartegraph, Infor, EPL/Energov, Laserfiche for internal paperless review processes
d. Ride along - go out on the field with staff.
e. Workout a maintenance schedule for Rectrac with EnerGov parcel updates. Maintenance schedule for updating addresses in Rectrac. Complete public Wi-Fi deployment to all City parks.
f. Procurement workflow to incorporate Risk Management insurance compliance system.
g. Implement a rapid-deployment system for traffic and environmental sensors (DONE)
h. Focus on Laserfiche public facing portal. Webpage improvements.
i. Infor Cloud Suite, Questica, Energov EPL for BTRs, Lease Query GASB 87 software (Visual Lease). Questica Transparency Portal - Go live for FY24 budget. ERP - Infor, WFM integration with external providers (Cigna, Humana, Nationwide, ARAG Legal, Supplemental insurance providers, etc.)
j. Parking cameras with GPS. Project started for Trolley cameras and GPS. (DONE). Complete the implementation of Smart Parking systems and related technology. New POS/eCommerce Portal to manage parking permits within the City by LPR, PGS implementation and integration with wayfinding APP, Inrix/Parkme Upgrade. Consolidation of all security camera resources within Parking. Add EV Charging infrastructure to City app (DONE). CBD Parking Lot management system camera/LPR based. Extend OpenGov/Cartegraph OMS to Parking department operations.
k. Train maintenance foremen and staff to become efficient with OpenGov/Cartegraph for use during maintenance of city sites. EnerGov training for staff and the public on how to submit permits online. Tree canopy maintenance mapping improvements.
l. Improvements to the electronic Proposal evaluation application. Roll-out of web based annual training programs (basic procurement training, solicitation process, p-card, etc.)
m. Employee Requisition approvals, Position Status Change Form approvals, Personnel Action Form approvals, Solicitation Request Form approvals, Automatic updates to Transparency Portal (Implemented with Questica), Questica Municipal budgeting dashboards and reporting.
n. Incorporate the Smart City technology into the city's economic development initiatives. Coordinate with the Chamber and CGIT a series of meetings with the business community to introduce the City's Smart City technology and its benefits. Coordinate with CGIT the expansion of the Department's technology workshops to the residential community. Coordinate with IT and the Consular Corps the technology lecture series for our international business community. Expansion of smart poles to other areas of the city to make the Smart City technology more accessible to the business community.
5. GIS, Spatial Computing, Data Analytics
a. Implement GIS integration services processes and procedures for all enterprise systems (DONE)
b. Establish a GIS Innovation Lab program with university students, internships, and faculty collaboration at the IT GIS office to manage R&D for geospatial computing and data science. (DONE)
c. Continually build GIS capabilities: business services, know-how, data transformation, application support
d. Enterprise GIS Data Resources (Metadata Checklist): Use data across all operational centers of the City to build an Enterprise GIS System of Record that supports a System of Engagement. Provide an authoritative data source that supports analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, collaboration, and a data catalog. Implement Knowledge Graph across data domains.
e. Apply AI with geospatial analytics using data from Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Virtual Design and Construction (VDC). Accelerate full-stack development, data science and BI for the enterprise.
f. Employ MR/AR/VR/XR applications and digital twin technology of City geographic features and IoT.
1. Improve Knowledge Transfer and Documentation
• Specific: Develop and implement a structured knowledge transfer program, including handover guides, process documentation, and ITSM knowledge library updates.
• Measurable: 100% of critical processes documented; 80% of outgoing team members complete handover checklists; increase ITSM knowledge base usage by 50%.
• Achievable: Assign a Knowledge Officer to oversee documentation; leverage existing in-house expertise.
• Relevant: Addresses weaknesses in knowledge loss, lack of documentation, and cross-team communication.
• Time-bound: Implement within 6 months, with quarterly reviews.
Action Steps:
1. Audit existing processes and knowledge gaps.
2. Create standardized templates for handovers and reports.
3. Train all staff on documentation practices.
4. Regularly update the ITSM knowledge library.
2. Enhance Cross-Team Collaboration and Communication
• Specific: Establish formal cross-departmental collaboration frameworks and regular knowledge-sharing sessions.
• Measurable: Conduct monthly cross-team meetings; track collaboration projects and initiatives; reduce isolated projects by 50%.
• Achievable: Utilize internal collaboration tools and schedule recurring meetings.
• Relevant: Reduces siloes, improves inter-departmental communication, and fosters innovation.
• Time-bound: Launch framework within 3 months; evaluate effectiveness after 6 months.
Action Steps:
1. Create an internal collaboration calendar.
2. Assign project liaisons for cross-team initiatives.
3. Introduce joint problem-solving sessions.
4. Conduct follow-up brainstorming and Kaizen sessions
5. Collect feedback to refine collaboration practices.
3. Leverage AI and Digital Innovation
• Specific: Implement AI-powered solutions such as AI Help Desk, AI Digital Twin for infrastructure monitoring, and predictive analytics in IT operations.
• Measurable: Deploy AI Help Desk for at least 60% of first-tier queries; reduce incident resolution time by 30%; launch AI Digital Twin pilot on core systems.
• Achievable: Use existing ITSM systems and AI frameworks; pilot AI solutions with limited scope before full deployment. ITSM agentic AI, LLM and Voice NLP integrations.
• Relevant: Aligns with opportunities in AI/ML and addresses ticket management inefficiencies.
• Time-bound: Pilot projects within 6 months; full deployment within 12 months.
Action Steps:
1. Conduct feasibility study on AI integration.
2. Configure AI Help Desk and train it with existing tickets and knowledge base.
3. Develop AI Digital Twin model for critical infrastructure.
4. Monitor, evaluate, and iterate AI performance.
4. Centralize IT Asset and Ticket Management
• Specific: Integrate all IT asset databases and ticketing systems into a centralized ITSM platform.
• Measurable: 100% of IT assets tracked centrally; 90% of tickets routed and monitored in centralized ITSM system.
• Achievable: Use ITSM system improvements (Fresh Service enhancements, ITSM agentic AI, LLM and Voice NLP integrations, library support) and existing staff resources.
• Relevant: Reduces manual processes, improves tracking, and strengthens follow-up culture.
• Time-bound: Complete integration within 8 months; evaluate efficiency improvements quarterly.
Action Steps:
1. Audit current IT asset and ticketing systems.
2. Standardize asset and ticket tracking formats.
3. Migrate all records to centralized ITSM platform.
4. Train staff on new system workflows.
5. Strengthen Training and Continuing Education
• Specific: Implement a continuous training program, including internal and external courses, AI/ML workshops, and ITSM best practices.
• Measurable: 100% staff complete minimum of 20 hours of training per year; increase end-user satisfaction score by 20%.
• Achievable: Leverage free courses, in-house expertise, and partnerships with educational agencies.
• Relevant: Addresses knowledge gaps, lack of training for users, and keeps staff updated with latest tech trends.
• Time-bound: Launch program in 3 months; review completion rates annually.
Action Steps:
1. Identify skill gaps and training needs.
2. Schedule internal knowledge-sharing sessions.
3. Encourage external certifications or courses.
4. Monitor training participation and effectiveness.
6. Enhance Security and Risk Management
• Specific: Implement security keys, monitor for abnormal network activity, and develop protocols against adversarial AI threats.
• Measurable: Reduce security incidents by 40%; implement multi-factor authentication for all systems; train 100% of staff on new security protocols.
• Achievable: Use existing IT security frameworks and resources.
• Relevant: Mitigates threats and protects IT infrastructure.
• Time-bound: Roll out security measures within 4 months; conduct quarterly risk assessments.
Action Steps:
1. Audit current security vulnerabilities.
2. Deploy security keys and authentication protocols.
3. Monitor network traffic for anomalies.
4. Train staff on security awareness and procedures.
• Executive Summary of Recommendations from Subject Matter Experts (Delphi Technique)
Responses received from external surveys sent to our smart city innovation partner organizations and external subject matter experts (SME) and futurists in academia, government, and industry, such as: UM, FIU, NIST, DOE, PNNL, IEEE, IISE, ASQ, DOD, USAF, NTIA, STIR Labs, MIT, CTI, UCB, Nova U, MDC College, CDG, and other organizations (most of them already adopted, started, and set in motion):
o Leverage grants for Technology deployments (based on limited availability of ARPA / IIJA funding)
o Digital equity, with focus on programs supporting virtual school capacity. A distributed data strategy mitigates privacy, security and inclusion issues and helps deliver affordable services to citizens.
o Prosperous City Beautiful: Enabling local business digitally (with security and equity built in). City Beautiful for Engaged Citizens: buy-local. Workforce development, tech talent, digital literacy/inclusion.
o City-wide neutral host fiber deployment. City-wide city-owned wireless Internet access at parks and other recreational facilities, and at anchor institutions (libraries, healthcare centers, fire stations, and other cityowned or voluntarily provided private sector locations.) Minimize unsightly small cell sites by providing neutral hosting small-cell sites operated by the city and fed by city fiber.
o Engage in an ongoing program of building and maintaining Civic Trust. Consider the contents of your open data program and how it might encourage others to come up with insightful and innovative ways of improving the city. Take regular stock of digitally-offered public services.
o Keep driving your previous push for making everything more accessible by the people like open data and enhanced data analytics. Building the right digital services from a mobile first perspective will be a game changer. Manage identities through this entire process.
o Sustainable digital ecosystem for all: invite biz associations to partner; larger enterprises to provide volunteers; and schools to provide interns; help viable but disadvantaged small biz sign up for accelerators; Biz in ecosystem get digital with a proven playbook through volunteer and interns; people in ecosystem buy local from each other. City and partner biz associations will get good engagement with small biz. Tools to facilitate workforce development and connections to different stakeholders in the city.
o Sustainability / EV charge network preparation to set conditions for growth. Integration of sensors and hardware to impact Vision Zero program. Continue pushing the envelope by piloting other use of AI and ML to take care of those data intensive functions like managing cyber logs or other large data sets. No-Code or Low-Code development is becoming more common place along with building services in platform tools that can be built upon for later needs. A.I. for workforce development.
o Increase private sector and resident involvement in project execution, beyond pre-project research or postproject assessment. Continue use of social media and other engagement tools that bring new stakeholders to the table. Decentralized social networks will offer a big opportunity for service providers to deliver better more targeted services to all citizens at lower cost. Provide a decentralized data platform on which the ecosystem of partnerships can innovate with services that serve citizens.
o Keep the team focused on what you can deliver successfully creating incremental wins. Continue narrowing the digital divide sustainably, with more human centered design. Growing a sustainable digital ecosystem is a good foundation for all smart city KPIs and a bedrock for engagement and well-grounded innovations.
o Partner in workforce development. Continue sharing what you learn with the innovation network. Add more collaborations with proven partners and stakeholders. Keep supporting joint research grants.
• Analysis of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)-Powered Public Sentiment (Public Discourse and Customer Requests Analytics and Heuristics)
Public discourse topics, focus areas and Priorities, and close-match CGIT strategic alignment with action plans and frameworks.
Highlighted discourse topics with over 5% recurrence:
• Local Economy (21%)
Strategic Alignment: CGIT Strategic Action Plans 4.1-1, 4.1-3, 4.1-4
Smart City Strategic Management Frameworks 1, 3, 4, 7, 8
• Public Safety (15%)
Strategic Alignment: CGIT Strategic Action Plans 4.1-1, 4.1-2, 4.1-3, 4.1-4, 4.2-1, 4.2-2, 4.2-3, 6.1-1
Smart City Strategic Management Frameworks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
• Human Relations and Services (12%)
Strategic Alignment: CGIT Strategic Action Plans 4.1-1, 4.1-2, 4.2-1, 4.2-2, 4.2-3
Smart City Strategic Management Frameworks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7
• Planning and Development (9%)
Strategic Alignment: CGIT Strategic Action Plans 4.1-1, 4.1-2, 4.2-2, 4.2-3
• Cultural Affairs (9%)
Smart City Strategic Management Frameworks 1, 4, 5, 6, 7
Strategic Alignment: CGIT Strategic Action Plans 4.1-2, 4.1-3, 4.1-4, 4.2-3
Smart City Strategic Management Frameworks 1, 3, 4, 7, 8
• Education (6%)
Strategic Alignment: CGIT Strategic Action Plans 4.1-1, 4.1-3, 4.1-4
• Transportation (6%)
Smart City Strategic Management Frameworks 1, 3, 4, 7, 8
Strategic Alignment: CGIT Strategic Action Plans 4.1-1, 4.1-2, 4.1-3, 4.1-4, 4.2-3
Smart City Strategic Management Frameworks 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Discourse Topics with 5% or less recurrence
With overall strategic alignment with CGIT strategic action plans; ongoing projects, operation plans (CGITOP) and initiatives; and smart city strategic management frameworks:
• Parks and Recreation (5%)
• Political Affairs (5%)
• Public Works (4%)
• Public Health (3%)
• Sanitation (2%)
• Animal Care and Control (1%)
• Sustainability & Environment (1%)
CGIT Success Metrics, Benchmarks, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and Key Business Indicators (KBI’s):
• IT Spending as a Percent of Operating Expense; IT Spending Per Employee
• IT FTE Employees as a Percent of Total Employees
• Number of projects implemented; Number of Completed projects
• Support tickets received, tickets closed, % of tickets closed; Response Time; Customer Satisfaction average ratings
• CPU usage by City enterprise systems; Memory usage by City enterprise systems
• System uptime and SLA on annual basis
• Number of physical servers/hosts & VMs citywide; Number of client devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, handhelds…)
• Number of network devices (routers/switches, firewalls/filters/gateways, IoT, wireless, phones, storage, AV, cameras, trailers); Broadband Service Points Added
• Total number of applications supported; Home-grown applications; Off the Shelf (OTS) application
• E-Waste Processed/Disposed/Recycled (cumulated pounds)
• Number of Employees Trained in Technology
Smart
City
Quality-of-Life
KPI’s and Holistic KPI’s:
• Benchmarks in applying technology to improve operational efficiencies, quality of life, public safety and mobility. Ability to leverage data and technology to improve city services.
• % achievement of digital transformation/modernization goals. Amount/% of technical debt reduction
• Crime Reduction (%/year), Crashes/Accidents Reduction (%/year), presence/use of smart policing technologies (closed-circuit TV cameras, body-worn cameras, mobile camera banks in critical areas, license plate readers, drones, crime data analytics and apps, police-to-citizen apps, connected doorbell cameras, etc.)
• Economic Growth technology KPIs (presence of real-time pedestrian and vehicular traffic data in downtown areas, use by retail businesses marketing and sales strategies, digital literacy programs metrics…)
• Number of Traffic, Safety and Environmental sensors, and % of neighborhoods measured (or population impacted across all communities and demographics)
• Data centers and cloud capacity, resilience/reliability, SLA, uptime
• Number of open data dashboards and datasets, web and mobile applications, citizen engagement tools, open data and transparency platforms
• Downloadable apps for residents, businesses and visitors (traffic, mobility, parking, report issues, etc.)
• Network, Infrastructure and Services Resiliency – Survivability metrics (uptime, automated failovers, fault tolerance, reliability under disaster conditions)
• State of development of smart/connected districts, smart buildings, and broadband corridors.
• Reduction in energy and water consumption, fuel usage, and overall greenhouse gas emissions
• Miles from Internet Hubs and NAPs
• Green Building benchmarks, LEED Green Construction practices, existence of regulations that require City public buildings/private buildings to be built to LEED Silver or equivalent. LEED Certifications for Cities and Communities. Green Business Programs.
• City programs focused on resiliency and dealing with the future potential sea level and climate impacts (LiDAR elevation maps, Adaptation Strategies and Legal Considerations, vulnerability assessments looking at critical infrastructure in relation to future sea level projections, tidal/sediment gauge studies…)
• Funds ($) dedicated to a sea level mitigation (infrastructure reserve) which will be used to help fund future adaptation and mitigation efforts. Sum ($) set aside for the next 30 years.
• Digital services (secure/online payments, applications, business licenses, permits, etc.)
• Streamlined operations (Presence/number of enterprise systems that enable the City to better manage citizen services, city assets, facilities, permitting, finance, operations, procurement, human resources and payroll, streamlining procedures and reducing data entry, avoid trips and carbon emissions, avoid/reduce paper, help employees timely get the data they need, to better decisions and improve the City’s day-today operations)
• Presence and Coverage of Free Public Wi-Fi networks (streets, community centers, parks, facilities, schools, neighborhoods, etc.)
• Benchmarks of City’s performance and innovation in using technology to align with city goals; promote citizen inclusion in important government processes; share government data with the public; proactively address citizen expectations; boost cybersecurity and increase efficiency.
• Number of public/private charging stations and charging points throughout the City.
• Costs savings ($, %), cut waste in infrastructure, services, operations, energy use, carbon footprint, and maintenance overhead.
• Benchmarks related to adoption and facilitation of adoption of Solar energy and other alternative energy sources, e.g.: SolSmart Designation through the Solar Foundation, International City/County Management Association (ICMA), and the U.S. DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office
• Infrastructure resources and capacity for existing services and applications. Provision for planned enhancements, projected growth, demand forecast and foreseeable/visionary future.
• Compliance with federal, state, county, city and industry standards, best practices, rules, and regulations for information management, security and public safety, sustainability and environmental conservation, financial regulations, government controls, and any other applicable area of compliance.
• Electric Vehicles and Alternative Transportation (number of municipal and public/private electric vehicles). % of the City’s total fleet that is electric.
• Waste Reduction/Recycling benchmarks; banning of single use plastic bags, expanded polystyrene “Styrofoam”, single use plastic straws, etc. City education programs encouraging local businesses and residents to become “green”/more sustainable.
• Household and commercial hazardous waste collection events Number of pounds of household hazardous waste and electronic waste that has been recycled and diverted from the landfill
• Prescription drug disposal programs. Number of pounds of prescription drugs disposed.
• Current State of the Innovation and Technology Plan: % completion of 5-year strategic goals, multi-disciplinary I.T. team capabilities (Innovation and Technology human capital), Presence of a robust, resilient, state-of-theart smart city infrastructure; State of development of a citywide culture around quality, innovation, learning, continuous improvement, and excellent customer service; Number of established standards and best management practices; achieved high, competitive benchmarks in uptime, customer satisfaction, and quality of services; Number of strategic partnerships with organizations across sectors and industries; State of development of a smart city ecosystem that attracts talent and investment, fostering innovation and economic growth in the city, number of Tech VC deals and IPOs, number of established and new tech companies/startups.
• Strategic Project Portfolio management metrics (# of projects, total $, completion, budget, success metrics, stakeholders, ROI, % on-time, under-budget, on-scope, etc.)
• Number of published STEM papers related to smart cities, smart buildings, ICI infrastructure and applied AI
• Number of R&D projects and research collaboration with industry and academia related to smart cities, smart buildings, ICI infrastructure and applied AI
• Innovation & Technology and Smart City Team and leadership maturity - qualifications, licenses and certifications in information technology, policy, cybersecurity, engineering, business analysis, standards and best practices, business administration, quality management, network and systems, technical education, office automation and other key areas.
• Leveraging of existing and emerging innovative technologies and skillsets to increase efficiency for the entire City, and advance Smart City programs with sustainable use of resources, innovation, citizen engagement, excellent public safety services and smart technologies for advanced and responsive citizen services.
ITAM CapEx and OpEx Cycle Cost Reduction and Optimization Strategies
CGIT cost saving/efficiency/optimization options and opportunities to be exercised in accordance with SLA, City Procurement Code and Finance/Procurement/Budget process and in alignment with economic sustainability plans:
• Reduce counts: check if the number of units, licenses, etc. can be reduced (remove excess/unused capacity that is not needed).
• Competitive bidding pricing: work with Finance/Procurement to leverage RFPs and other processes to create a competitive environment to reduce pricing as well as improve terms and conditions
• Change provider, maker or models: provide same or better service with a different provider, maker or model, which offers lower cost and same or better quality.
• Leverage economy of scale/volume pricing: ask for volume pricing alternatives from vendors/manufacturers/providers when applicable. Align the customer needs and your operational plans to maximize the opportunities for buying in bulk at once and qualify for volume discounts.
• Reschedule the purchasing dates: to match high volume needs and take advantage of vendor special sale events such as Black Friday/Cyber-Monday, 4th of July sales, Memorial Day sales, manufacturer fiscal year closing, etc., as far as services are not impacted and risk of depreciation is not significant
• Extend life-cycle: when it does not compromise the quality of services and does not void critical support or warranty without an alternative maintenance/replacement option, consider extending the life-cycle of equipment and software within reason.
• Lower unit pricing: by asking the provider(s) through the City Procurement process.
• Change systems architecture: re-engineer systems taking advantage of new and more cost-effective technologies that reduce footprint, form-factor, and add scalability, better features and functionalities. For example, implement scalable SaaS, virtualization, hyper-converged and cloud infrastructure when possible to reduce on-prem total cost of ownership (TCO), operational costs and footprint.
• Reduce collateral costs associated with the technology: for example, replace the support provider, reduce energy/space/cooling consumption, reduce the need for professional services by training staff, etc.
• Purchase high-quality second-market/refurbished equipment: for non-critical use, only when it does not compromise the quality of service, and when alternative and adequate methods of replacement and maintenance support exist.
• Lease and multi-year service contract options: explore with Finance and Procurement the lease options available in the market from the manufacturer/reseller/financial institutions, leveraging the City’s triple AAA bond ratings to obtain 0 to very-low interest rates and good financial plans and discounts for 3 or 5 year leases and service contracts, or lease-to-own options, with future price locked services.
• Audit the quotes/contracts/bills: with the help from vendor-agnostic industry experts, identify opportunities for cost savings in waste/duplication elimination, better licensing/support plans, loyalty discounts, financing discounts, multi-year contract discounts, additional volume discounts, unused offers, “first-time-customer” deals, etc.
• First Time Buyer/Customer cost savings: leverage the opportunity to realize discounts when buying services or products for the first time from a provider or manufacturer
• First Market/Area Customer cost savings: leverage the opportunity to realize market discounts when being the first customer of a new technology of service in the region or government market.
• Organization standing: Leverage City of Coral Gables quality-of-life, fiscal responsibility, smart city innovation ecosystem, and world-class organization standing, as a reason for competing vendors to offer discounts on technology products and services to the City as part of the Procurement process.
• Reduce/cut unnecessary third-party support: of high-volume, easily replaceable, non-critical equipment, when quality of service and business continuity are not affected, the OEM product Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) is not high, and enough replacement stock is available in-house for quick replacement when broken.
• Leverage remote access capabilities: reduce the need for vendor T&E overhead and onsite support by facilitating secure remote access capabilities with proper controls and ask for those provider cost savings and efficiencies to be passed to the city as a customer in the form of proposal / work order / invoice discounts.
• Eliminate the item: check if the item is still truly needed and used before replacing/renewing. Look for duplications and shadow-IT issues and conduct a business analysis with department heads to determine if an item is really needed and aligned with the City’s mission, strategic goals and citizens’ needs and priorities
Strategic Programs, Projects, and Initiatives (aligned with Operation & Capital Improvement/Refresh Cycles):
• Smart City Roadmap (see Smart City Vision and Strategic Management Frameworks on fig. 1-11):
o 0. Industry 4.0/Quality 4.0 Smart City Vision
o 1. Smart City Strategic Focus Areas Charts
o 2. Quality Engineering and Process Improvement Framework
o 3. Robust and Resilient High-Speed Network Design
o 4. Smart City Engineering Framework
o 5. Interoperability Systems Engineering Model. 6. Enterprise Systems Best Practice Framework
o 7. Strategic Project Portfolio Management Framework
o 8. Smart City Strategic Partnership, Research and Collaboration Model
• Citywide Enterprise Technology Projects and Initiatives:
o Strategic technology projects aligned with goals and priorities identified for each City department (Technology Needs Assessments co-created by CGIT and the leadership of each City department)
o Citywide business process improvements and SOP Libraries
o Enterprise systems new business capabilities and horizontal integration New ERP Cloud Suites Dashboards.
o e-Permitting, land management, electronic plan review systems. EPL.
o Fleet Management Systems and Asset Tracking
o Asset/Facility/ROW Asset Management and Community Recreation enterprise systems enhancements.
o Inter/Intranet Web portals upgrade. Mobile Apps enhancements. Citizen UX/Engagement CRM systems.
o Enterprise Project Management systems
o Enterprise GIS Platform, Spatial Computing projects, and Geospatial Service Integration. GIS Lab.
o ERP/EBC/EOS Cloud Suite Training and Business Process Review (BPR). Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
• Public Safety Projects and Initiatives:
o Community Intelligence Center systems, operations, applications (Crime and traffic analytics, VMS, LPR)
o CCTV/ALPR Projects. Traffic safety systems. Physical security, alarms, access control improvements.
o Public Safety technology infrastructure upgrades. Fire EMS Upgrades. Priority Dispatch and 911 PSAP upgrades. CAD and RMS cloud native suite platforms.
o Fire and Emergency Management systems electronic processes integration and mobility.
o Fire and Police scheduling system enhancements. ePCR, Telemedicine.
o Public Safety Facility Projects: New PSHQ, FS2 & FS3 renovations, FS4, FSU, 1ry and backup PSAP, PDIA.
• I&T Strategic Projects and Initiatives:
o Smart City Projects: Smart City Hub and Digital Twin public platforms, real-time visibility/BI and data analytics, smart districts, IoT/AI/XR/Web3/Robotics use cases, sustainability, trolley/fleet tracking system, smart kiosks, context-aware technologies, electronic signatures, public sentiment, AI chatbots, NLP, CRM
o Lean six sigma process improvement citywide, 100% paperless processes, citywide optimization, streamlining and automation of manual processes. IT cost reduction and revenue opportunities.
o Cybersecurity enhancement plan. Security awareness, risk management, audits program. PCI compliance.
o R&D projects collaboration with NIST, PNNL, DOE, UM, FIU, MDC, MIT, UC, IEEE, IISE, NPOs, STIR Labs.
• I&T Backend Cyberinfrastructure Projects and Initiatives:
o Network Infrastructure Upgrades. Fiber corridors and wireless backbone. Smart Districts Expansions.
o Systems Infrastructure upgrades and refresh: Storage systems, Databases, Office 365, Cloud platforms/systems, disaster recovery (DR) distributed cloud, virtual servers/desktops/VDI, hyper-converged systems (HCIS) and Software-Defined Networks (SDN), APIs/iPaaS, storage as a service (StaaS), computing as a service (CaaS), software as a service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
o Datacenter footprint reduction (costs, space, power, cooling); stack flexibility/scalability. DR Cloud backups.
o Wireless Backbone and smart Wi-Fi Projects. Connected mobility and 5G/small-cell and private networks.
• I&T Team Development Initiatives:
o Staff development, training, and certification plan. Industry 4.0 exponential technology skill growth.
o Team building activities. Leadership initiatives. Performance excellence and benchmarking.
o Think Tank and Innovation program. CGIT Brainstorming Sessions program. Internships.
o Workspace improvement. Telework and virtual workspace technology support strategies.
CGIT Smart City Research Laboratory and Gables TechTank STEM Incubator
Research & Development Aligned with the City’s Strategic Goals
CGIT augments capacity for its technology innovation, continuous improvement programs and STEM education, talent pipeline and workforce development initiatives through its Smart City Research Laboratory CGIT developed its research lab and campus at the City’s Facilities complex, where our team of engineers and experts in various STEM disciplines conduct R&D projects with student interns and research fellows from multiple universities, colleges and schools. We also connect our student interns with career opportunities and with local businesses in Coral Gables and South Florida through our Gables TechTank STEM incubator, launched by CGIT in collaboration with the Economic Development department, local businesses, NPOs and local education institutions. CGIT staff and our student interns work on projects at the Lab to enhance our smart city systems, technology infrastructure and citizen services leveraging cutting-edge technologies like AI and machine learning, virtual/augmented reality, Internet of Things sensors, BIM/VDC and digital twins, 3D printing and additive manufacturing / digital fabrication, drones and autonomous systems, full-stack development and other technologies. Many of the projects developed by our lab staff and student interns are now in production on our city platforms and in use by city departments and the public on our Smart City Hub public platform www.CoralGables.AI. Many of the projects developed by the Lab cohorts are published as online project portfolios, like the ones developed by the Summer 2024 cohort.
Education and Workforce Development: Building the Tech Talent Pipeline
A central focus of Coral Gables’ strategy is education and workforce development. Our Smart City Research Laboratory provides internships and research opportunities to high school, undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and postdoctoral students. These programs are run in partnership with leading academic institutions. As of 2025, we have had over 170 interns and resident researchers, from undergrad and grad STEM programs (computer science, electrical engineering, robotics engineering, software engineering, data science, statistics and mathematics, STEM academies) from both Florida and out-of-state universities/colleges/schools: UM, FIU, Miami-Dade College, UF, UCF, FAU, FGCU, NOVA, Barry, Broward College, Coral Gables High School, Ramson Academy, Gulliver Academy, Doral Academy, and others (Florida); and Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, SpaceX aerospace engineering researcher, Colorado U, Syracuse U, Purdue U, MIT, NWU, WVU, Elon U, and others (Out-of-State). Interns that complete our CGIT Lab internship receive a certificate micro-credential that lists the specific knowledge areas and technologies they worked and trained on during their internship. Some of the Lab student interns and research fellows are paid with workforce development and research grants funds awarded to the partner universities by NSF, NIST, Parker Dewey and other agencies and organizations Once the interns finish their internship, they return to their colleges/universities and connect with job opportunities in the industry leveraging the hands-on professional experience and project portfolio they gained in the City. We connect our Research Lab interns with career opportunities through our Interns Portal and business bulletins, workforce development events, and other avenues. Our Interns Portal help connect the interns with jobs, internships and other career opportunities in the Coral Gables business and entrepreneurial community. We also host several events with workforce development organizations, where our interns pitch their projects and skills to local businesses and universities, in city venues like the Coral Gables Country Club. Many of the CGIT Research Lab projects are showcased on the City’s Smart City Hub and in the Innovation and Technology Bulletin. This program connects businesses, academic institutions, and local talent to upskill professionals in high-demand areas such as cybersecurity, AI, machine learning, data science, and fullstack development, helping participants develop industry-ready skills.
Internships Driving Real-World Impact
Interns at the CGIT Lab gain hands-on experience with technologies including:
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning
• Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR)
• Internet of Things (IoT) & Smart Sensors
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Building Information Modeling (BIM) & Digital Twins
• 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing
• Autonomous Systems & Drones
• Full-Stack Development
These projects are aligned with CGIT’s strategic goals and deliver real value to city departments and residents. Many of the tools and systems developed by interns are currently in production, improving efficiency and citizen services. Many alumni have gone on to secure careers as software engineers, data scientists, cybersecurity analysts, and IT
specialists in high-tech companies and startups. Some have even been hired by the City to continue contributing to our innovation ecosystem. CGIT leverages its Smart City Research Lab as its primary STEM Talent Pipeline. Recent Internship Projects: A Glimpse into the Future
The Summer 2025 internship cohort included students and researchers from top South Florida institutions such as the University of Miami, Florida International University, and Miami-Dade College as well as out-of-state institutions. Their projects highlight the cutting-edge nature of CGIT’s research and illustrate the transformative role of applied research in building smarter cities and a strong, future-ready workforce:
• GIS & Digital Twins: Interns like Nabanita Majumder (UM) developed interactive GIS maps and creating digital twins of city facilities.
• AI-Powered Public Services: Sueda Tare (Miami-Dade College) and Allan Prieb (Florida International University) worked on a GIS RAG engine to enhance the City’s AI assistant (AIDA 4.0 / Coral AI), while Aaron Nogues (UCF) built a language model that summarizes city meetings and emails the results to residents.
• Smart Applications: Timmy Loos (UF) created a mobile app that integrates the City’s AI-powered IT service management system with voice command capabilities.
• IoT and Environmental Monitoring: Morgan Fuller (Purdue/SpaceX) is leading an R&D project on AI-powered gas sensors for scalable and resilient environmental monitoring. Hannah Schmitz (UM, engineering) is assisting.
This program has a big impact on workforce development, STEM education, job creation, and building an innovation ecosystem in our region. Out CGIT team earned the 2025 GeoGov Innovation in Education, Workforce Development, and Capacity Building Award; the 2025 Tech Talent Pipeline Workforce Development Award‚ and the Intelligent Community Full Certification (2025-2027) among other recognition for these efforts By investing in mentorship and cutting-edge research through this initiative, CGIT is building the next generation of technology leaders while enhancing the city’s smart infrastructure and services. More information in this paper
Exponential Technologies Strategic Use Cases and Stakeholders:
I. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML):
Coral
Gables
AI/ML
Application End Users:
Citizens, city officials, employees from all city departments, researchers, marketing and city analysts, businesses, planners, public safety officials, first responders, traffic engineers, and all members of the smart city ecosystem. Constituents benefit from actionable data insight, predictive analytics generated and processed by AI/ML-capable engines with dashboard visualization in the Smart City Hub. Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) frameworks, AI business capacity augmentation, high visibility, predictability and process/workflow automation drive efficiencies and enhance operations and effectiveness. Helps process millions of data points from connected devices and cyber-physical systems and derive real-time value and correlation. Used for situational awareness, UX, urban planning, traffic and civil engineering to design safer roads and infrastructure. Used by businesses to design strategies (retail, service), grow sales, understand market and consumer needs.
City of Coral Gables AI/ML Use Cases: Smart City Infrastructure, Services and Operations
For the past 10+ years, CGIT has leveraged Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies to boost enterprise automation, urban analytics and business intelligence (BI) capabilities that add value and efficiencies citywide. CGIT has engineered, integrated and launched multiple new AI-powered systems, services and applications for operational efficiencies and enhanced user experience. New systems include the 4th generation of CGIT homegrown Artificial Intelligence Digital Assistant (AIDA 4.0, aka Coral), several agentic AI homegrown applications, large language models (LLM) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks for internal departments use, and various AI-powered intelligent connected infrastructure (ICI). These AIpowered capabilities help our city analyze millions of data points in real time to derive actionable insight for stakeholders, decisionmakers and incident responders on areas critical to quality of life, such as: public safety, traffic management, environmental sustainability, citizen engagement, cybersecurity, and city operations, among others. AI also enables workflow automation and higher efficiencies on city enterprise systems and processes, helps us engage with citizens and improve customer service 24/7 on city portals and apps, and facilitates the implementation of complex traffic management systems. Some of these applied-AI deployments, research and use cases are captured in this paper: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Improve Municipal Services and Quality of Life
AI Use Cases and Governance Programs:
o AI Powered Infrastructure rollout in the smart districts and city buildings/facilities. IoT sensors and cyberphysical systems: AI-powered smart poles and devices, edge analytics, traffic, environmental public safety and situational awareness, AI-assisted connected mobility/traffic management systems, and computer vision training models; training AI models to detect, classify, analyze and count multimodal traffic entities (bicycles, vehicles, pedestrians, curb management, and street parking spots); LiDAR photonics right-of-way (ROW) asset analytics (application of Random Forests ML algorithms programmatically in traffic engineering and point-cloud data of city roads to predict road condition, anomalies and deterioration); and situational awareness and traffic safety analytics in our community intelligence center (CIC). Intelligent networks: AIpowered fault-tolerance with automated network failovers and advanced cybersecurity systems, threat detection and heuristics.
o Roll out of four AI-powered Smart City Modular Poles, first of their kind in North America.
o Launch of Digital Twin platform with GeoAI and spatial intelligence analytics, Smart City Hub, and Urban Analytics AI-powered platforms.
o Internal AI agents, LLM models & RAG frameworks for city departments and processes (Procurement, Development Services, Community Recreation, Public Works, HR, IT, City Clerk, and other areas.)
o Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA) R&D project with the U.S. DOE and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on AI-assisted traffic/energy optimization. Research paper presented by the AutonomIA team in 2024 at the IEEE international conference on ML, held for the first time in Coral Gables.
o AI Digital Assistant (AIDA 4.0, aka Coral) public chatbot, which allows residents and visitors to ask questions and submit prompts querying the resources and information on the City’s Website and the Smart City Hub.
o Implementation and roll out of Microsoft Copilot AI, integrated with Microsoft 365 cloud suite applications, and other commercial and crowdsourced AI-powered analytics: public sentiment, market, behavioral, and traffic data analytics applications; use of commercial GenAI and LLM open platforms and AI-as-a-Service
data marketplaces (OpenAI ChatGPT and GPT4 API, Google Gemini/Bard, Salesforce AgentForce, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Meta AI, x.AI Grok, ZenCity.io, Placer.ai, Urban SDK, Spectus.ai) at the CGIT research lab and to boost office and field productivity.
o Enterprise systems, user applications, and service delivery: smart city platforms; customer relationship management (CRM), AI chatbots and digital assistants, Web3/XR avatars and digital personas; robotic process automation (RPA), GenAI use cases, and smart mobile apps; internal/secure GenAI LLM and RAG environments for advanced document search and analytics; AI-powered IT Service Management (ITSM) system with automated workflows, Infor AI ERP engine, embedded AI agents and chatbots digital assistants across all enterprise systems in the organization: financial, HR, SCM, permit and licensing, learning platforms, asset management systems, electronic document management systems, office tools, CRM, 311 apps, digital experience platforms, and other systems
o R&D in our smart city labs, incubators and research collaborations, AI training/upskilling and workforce development programs: internships, residencies, grant-funded research with universities, industry and scientific institutions; CGIT research projects and pilot prototypes; Gables TechTank incubator AI training/upskilling programs; AI training MOU for IT professionals (Data Science, AI, ML, and Deep Learning / Neural Networks track syllabus); AI hackathons.
o Cloud and backend analytics and automation: AI/ML models and algorithms; urban analytics engines and AI-powered data platforms; data correlation, actionable insight, and hyper-automation for traffic, emergency management and public safety environments; predictive crime analytics using ML algorithms, and automated traffic studies.
o New/upgraded homegrown version of the AI Digital Assistant (AIDA 4.0, aka Coral) public chatbot, which allows residents and visitors to ask questions and submit prompts querying the resources and information in the City’s Website (embedded agent on the lower-right corner of CoralGables.com). Aida 4.0 moves from helpful prototype to city-grade assistant more accurate, reliable, tightly integrated with the official website, and accessible for the whole community. As City of Coral Gables celebrated its Centennial in 2025, CGIT developed Coral as a friendly AI ambassador built on our homegrown AIDA framework, representing Coral Gables' vision of a world-class city with a hometown feel. AIDA evolution phases storyboard (20212025) | Coral standalone AIDA version with voice interface.
o Internal AI agents for various city departments and processes such as Procurement, Development Services, Community Recreation, Public Works, Human Resources, Innovation & Technology and other functional areas. CGIT works with all city departments to develop the knowledge bases and data lakes used to train the AI LLM models and RAG frameworks. These AI agents are also part of a new Intranet portal on Microsoft 365 Cloud.
o New AI-powered IT Service Management (ITSM) system with AI-powered automated workflows.
o Citywide AI Policies, High-ROI Microsoft 365 Copilot AI use cases, workflow automation, and efficiencies. Technical training for CGIT staff in advanced AI tools, AI-powered data analytics, RPA automation, and software engineering. CGIT follows the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and the GovAI Best practices
o New AI-powered intelligent connected infrastructure (ICI) in the Coral Gables smart districts.
o New applied-AI R&D projects in the CGIT smart city laboratory and Gables TechTank incubator programs.
II. Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-physical Systems (CPS):
Coral Gables IoT End Users: sensor data is strategic and becomes actionable information (traffic engineers, public safety officers, urban planners, city management, city officials, researchers, businesses, entrepreneurs, market analysts, decision-makers, students, the public in general). Open IoT data aggregated in the smart city hub and private IoT data is studied by researchers, marketing and city analysts and used by businesses, planners, public safety officials, traffic engineers, city officials and constituents that are part of the smart city ecosystem. Constituents benefit from actionable sensor data with dashboards visualization and statistics by hour/day/week/month. Used for urban planning and design, for traffic and civil engineering to design better and safer roads and infrastructure. Used by businesses to design strategies (retail, service), grow sales, understand market and consumer needs.
City of Coral Gables IoT Use Cases:
o Multimodal traffic sensors: pedestrian, vehicle, bicycle, visitors, RF, behavioral, red light, speed readers.
o CGIT IoT Mobile Trailers (traffic and environmental studies, research, operational and tactical support)
o Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR), CCTV camera/optical sensing, public safety smart devices.
o Smart Parking and Curbside Management sensors (counting and predicting available/busy spots).
o Fleet Management sensors. Smart/Connected Fleet. Connected EV charge stations.
o Smart/Connected public transportation fleet.
o Environmental sensors (water quality and water level/flooding detection, air quality, noise).
o Smart Lighting controllers and IoT networks, smart energy sensors.
o Smart City Digital Kiosks.
o Smart Districts Intelligent Connected Infrastructure (ICI). AI-powered Smart City modular poles.
o Networks and Utilities IP telemetry sensors and actuators (IP-SCADA, water systems, fuel stations, HVAC/water/electrical, mechanical networks and smart meter systems).
o Network Management Systems (NMS).
o Smart Building Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Building Automation Systems (BAS) sensors.
o IoT and Urban Analytics AI Platforms.
o Scientific-grade NIST-traceable IoT multi-sensor hyperlocal weather stations
o Published research paper on the IEEE IoT Magazine: “Smart City Case Study: City of Coral Gables Leverages the Internet of Things to Improve Quality of Life.”
o IoT Sensor fabrication at the CGIT Research Lab’s Makers, 3D Printing & Electronics Engineering stations
Smart Parking and Smart Mobility Use Cases:
o Smart parking mobile/web apps (Blinkay, Inrix/ParkMe, Salesforce 311 integration), cloud platform: Finding parking (GIS, GPS), cost information/comparison, real-time occupancy. Garage and lot gate integration.
o ParkSmart garages and Parking Guidance Systems (PGS, PARCS). AI-powered crowdsourced mobility data.
o Parking payment apps and cloud platforms (Pay by Phone, ParkMobile, Parkeon). Parking Permit portal.
o GIS parking facility management data layers. Horizontal Integration of Smart Parking Systems and Data.
o Coral Gables Mobile App and Smart City Hub public platform: aggregate all parking apps and open data.
o Automated Gateless Parking Guidance Systems, IoT and Cloud Data Platforms; smart mobility hub projects.
o Curbside parking Sensors: Homegrown pilot in Downtown Coral Gables. City IoT platform and dashboards.
o Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence smart parking pilot in Downtown Coral Gables, detecting and analyzing used/occupied street parking in Miracle Mile and other streets AutonomIA AI-assisted R&D.
o Connected gate systems: Garage occupancy data API interface on the City’s mobile app
o ALPR (Automated License Plate Readers) in Parking Garages and Parking enforcement vehicles
o Connected parking devices: Parkeon and other devices Connected vehicle fleet. Transit platform
o Community Intelligence Center (CIC) aggregates all video analytics for parking locations and sensors. Video management systems, ALPR systems, server analytics backend. Micro-mobility data hub.
o Integration of GTFS-RT transit route information of Coral Gables trolley with County and Google Maps.
o Trolley app/API, Freebee app, AVL, connected fleet, AV pilots, crowdsource: Waze CCP, Spectus.AI, Placer.AI
Drones/UAS, Robotics, Autonomous Systems Use Cases:
o Drones/UAS use cases:
▪ Hurricane rescue recon and damage assessment (during hurricane Irma and other storms).
▪ Combined use case with crowd analysis, drones, IoT, AI/ML, autonomous routes, computer vision, satellite communication, data analytics on public safety Incident Command Post real-time scenario.
▪ Drone delivery for rescue recon and other emergency management scenarios.
▪ With live video broadcasting; with autonomous routes; with cellular or satellite communications.
▪ Outdoor health testing/vaccination sites monitoring.
▪ Building rooftop water damage/accumulation assessment. Water flow blockages and graffiti localization.
▪ Telecom tower/antennae inspections Fire accreditation, site operations/inspections.
▪ LiDAR GIS 3D modeling in collaboration with universities and GIS aerial photography. Photogrammetry.
▪ Video analytics and real-time RTMP server at the Incident Command Center.
▪ Communications / Public Affairs / CGTV drones with special cameras, dedicated for TV production for our PEG TV channel, YouTube, social media and webcasting channels.
▪ Public safety operations. Police Department manned drone program for incident response (Brinc, Bond)
o Autonomous vehicles county pilot with Ford and Argo AI, Waymo Urban robotics operations in the City.
o Smart and connected mobility pilots.
o 5G IoT/CPS connectivity pilots
o Public Safety and Public Works robotics technologies.
o NEXTCAR AutonomIA Traffic/Energy AI optimization R&D project with the U.S. DOE Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, City of Coral Gables, UC Berkeley, and industry partners, funded by the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E)
III. Spatial Computing, Digital Fabrication, HPC/Supercomputing, Quantum Computing, Blockchain Use Cases:
o GIS Innovation Lab pilots (spatial computing, virtual simulation labs, hubs, digital twin BIM/VDC/CAD, IoT integration. digital fabrication and 3D printing / makers lab, HoloLens/Oculus/Magic-Leap XR applications)
o Mixed/augmented/virtual reality (XR) projects. Immersive UX. City NFT marketplace, crypto-assets.
o MIT Blockchain Executive Program Blockchain smart city pilots/POCs (digital IDs, IoT security, advanced security ledgers, e-Notarization) Collaboration with blockchain innovation/entrepreneurship centers/DAO
o Digital Assistants, bots, XR, HCI and AI interactive government systems (STIR Labs cohort project)
o UM Triton supercomputer collaboration (Institute of Data Science and Computing – IDSC; smart city and emergency management data analysis); FIU supercomputer collaboration (NSF CIC proposal)
o AWS Quantum Computing as a Service research pilot GIS Cloud scalability and spatial data management.
o Edge computing integration with Digital Twin public platform: https://www.coralgables.com/DigitalTwin
Web3 and Blockchain Digital/Crypto Assets Use Cases:
In 2021 we started establishing trademark and brand presence for City of Coral Gables in the Web 3.0 and Crypto cyberspace (Blockchain, Crypto-assets, Metaverse/Omniverse, BTC/ETH/NFT platforms, exchanges, networks, DAO ecosystems). The primary goals were:
• To protect the City's intellectual property and brand in these new decentralized technological ecosystems of Web 3.0 the same way how we registered/published Web 1.0 static website domain names years ago for the City (e.g.: coralgables.com, citybeautiful.net, venetianpool.com, cgpd.com, paygables.com, etc.); and later when we claimed/published Web 2.0 social media platform pages and metatags for the City’s content community (e.g.: Twitter/citycoralgables, Facebook/cityofcoralgables, Linkedin/cityofcoralgables, Instagram/cityofcoralgables, @cityofcoralgables, #coralgables, etc.)
• To establish an official organization presence for our City in the Web 3.0 cyberspace and immersive media platforms, where the City can communicate with residents, businesses, visitors and customers, and promote the City as a premium destination for business, living, studying and visiting.
• To provide a Blockchain media for the City to mint copyrighted items as non-fungible tokens (NFT) collectibles (e.g: a City of Coral Gables Centennial NFT Digital Assets, Trees NFT Collection, etc.)
Initiatives:
• CGIT purchased Blockchain domains for the City, such as cityofcoralgables and coralgablescity .wallet/.nft/.bitcoin/.dao/.x/.coin/.888/.zil. In order to mint/register the domains in the Blockchain we also created crypto-wallets for the City and paid mint and gas fees with city-owned cryptocurrency.
• Registered/minted the "cityofcoralgables.eth" Ethereum blockchain domain in the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), using the crypto-wallet available balance in ETH.
• Created a cryptocurrency exchange account for the City, linked to a City bank account with a low FIAT investment of $1,000, and purchased an initial balance of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• Minted the City’s Blockchain domains that CGIT purchased for the City (see list above, e.g.: cityofcoralgables.nft/.bitcoin/etc...) to register the domains onto the blockchain via the City's cryptocurrency wallet to gain full custody of the domains for the City.
• CGIT created an NFT marketplace profile for the City in the OpenSea platform and several NFT collections for the City, linked to the City's crypto-wallets, and issued and minted City collectible digital asset series as non-fungible tokens (NFT) collectibles issue during the City’s Centennial: https://opensea.io/cityofcoralgables - Coral Gables Tree of the Year NFT collection
Fig. 2. CGIT Smart City Framework Architecture: 8 interconnected strategic management frameworks for a smart city roadmap designed from vision to planning and execution, with long-term strategic realignment/re-envisioning
Strategic Project Priorities for 2025/2026:
Enterprise Systems and Smart Platforms Projects:
• CloudSuite ERP FSM & SCM Optimization
• CloudSuite ERP Data analytics, BI, AI automation and reporting enhancements
• ERP Budget module optimization
• EPL BTR Licensing, CU and Fire Inspection System Migration/Upgrade, EPL system/process optimization
• CRM & Multichannel Marketing Cloud enhancements/optimization
• Smart parking permit system, curbside parking management & data analytics
• Community Recreation System optimization and UX enhancements
• New Intranet 365 portal go-live, homegrown AI agents
• Fleet Management GPS & Fuel Station Upgrades and Optimization
• SOP platform extension rollout
• Project Management & CIP cloud platform
• Public Safety data analytics platform, integration and BI
• New Granicus modules: short-term rentals, and City Clerk add-ons
• Lobbyists system upgrade (CCO & IT)
• Fire inspection system upgrade
• GIS Backend/Server Infrastructure Reengineering/Rebuilding
• LiDAR system and ROW asset data collection go-live
• AutonomIA traffic digital twin integration with the City's Smart City Hub
• Urban Analytics IoT platform enhancements / integrations
• Energy & Water AI data dashboards and API, Smart City Hub integration
• Gables Go! Centennial Web3/XR immersive portal
• ITSM Warehouse RFID Inventory System integration
Smart Buildings/Facilities and Network Infrastructure Projects:
• New Offices - City Commission (temp. at Minorca)
• New Offices - City Officials & Finance (temp. at 2020 Ponce)
• New Offices - Code Enforcement (475 Biltmore)
• DSC building remodeling/additions
• EOC Rewiring
• City Hall & Annex renovation, network/tech provisioning
• FS4 tech provisioning and FS3 network/tech upgrades, Locution, PA, AV, Phones, PCs, etc.
• Parks tech provisioning + public safety emergency poles + CCTV, Wi-Fi
• PARCS parking garage smart parking/revenue system
• CIC Backend/Frontend Hardware & AI-Powered Software Upgrade
• Youth Center network upgrades
• APM/NMS Upgrade
• 911 PSAP Upgrade
• Datacenter/Network, Cybersecurity, VMS, AV & Video Analytics Systems upgrades
• Citywide computer upgrades (office, field, fleet)
• Wi-Fi network upgrades
• CCTV/ALPR network nodes upgrades
Smart Districts Infrastructure & Field Technology Projects:
• Fiber corridors expansions phases 5-6: Ponce to US-1/Underline/Passport/FS2/PSAP/Trolley, North Gables
• WP2P links upgrades
• New Smart Poles expansion
• Downtown Emergency Poles upgrade
• Smart Lights upgrade
• Upgrade/extension of water/flood sensors / smart buoys
Projects Executed in 2025:
• Technology Engineering and Provisioning for Building Projects: Passport office network provisioning and relocation, Venetian Pool Concession renovation technology, AV support and overhaul for Community Meeting Room, Youth Center wireless communications upgrades, Public Works new offices, and other projects.
• Enterprise Systems Enhancements: Working with several city departments (Finance, Human Resources, Development Services, Community Recreations, Historical resources), completed various Enterprise Systems enhancements, including an employee portal implementation, HR benefit module implementation, enterprise permit and licensing process review, Community Recreation system payment process upgrade, Utility Management implementation, LiDAR street scanning system upgrade plan, Web3 immersive experience applications and digital content for the City’s Centennial, AI agents, and other improvements/optimizations.
• Completed Building/Node Connections for Phases I-IV of the Municipal Fiber, Broadband and Public Wi-Fi Expansion Project (Ponce de Leon, Alhambra Circle, Aragon, and Andalucia corridors; and new segments at University, Merrick Way, Parking Garage 1, Parking Garage 2, Parking Garage 6, and Adult Activity Center). Built additional fiber optics segments to connect multiple city buildings and facilities (Youth Center, Adult Activity Center, Parking Garages, Museum…), and installed additional smart city poles to improve/enhance connectivity, mobility, public safety, network resilience, situational awareness, digital inclusion, and citizen services; and foster innovation, quality of life programs and economic opportunities with a regional impact.
• New Smart City AI-powered Modular Pole: The new pole, installed in the Alhambra Cir. financial corridor at the Douglas Rd. intersection, connected to the City’s Community Intelligence Center (CIC) and integrated with the Coral Gables Smart City Hub Urban Analytics platform, features the Coral Gables v3 award-winning custom industrial design –created as a collaboration between our City, Ekin, and Pininfarina, with SME advice from the University of Miami School of Architecture. It provides free public Wi-Fi, CCTV, traffic/environmental IoT sensor data and traffic safety automation, and enhances public safety in that busy area of our central business district.
• Parking Enforcement System: Working with the Parking & Mobility department, completed the implementation of the parking enforcement and citation module of the City’s new integrated smart parking system, and started the implementation of the digital parking permit module, to improve operational efficiencies and user experience with advanced functionalities and interoperability between multiple systems.
• New Enterprise Fleet Management System: Working with Public Works’ Automotive division, implemented a new enterprise fleet management system (AssetWorks), to improve operational efficiencies with advanced functionalities and interoperability between fleet operation systems and comprehensive solution for tracking assets, reducing downtime, and optimizing maintenance, with automated maintenance schedules, real-time alerts, paperless work orders, advanced data reporting, digital workflows and other efficiencies.
• Multiple Network and Computer Upgrades and Additions: deployment of Parking officers’ handheld equipment and system configuration; network equipment upgrade at Parking Garage 2, Parking Garage 4, Parking Garage 6, Adult Activity Center, Biltmore Tennis Center, and City Facilities at 72nd Ave; enterprise call manager equipment upgrade; Police fleet and Fire fleet hardware upgrade; Code Enforcement hardware upgrade; Cybersecurity & Network Management infrastructure upgrades and enhancements, three new public safety trailers with advanced sensing and communications technology, citywide CCTV cameras upgrades, 16 new cameras deployed to mitigate illegal dumping, and other infrastructure upgrades and enhancements.
• Risk Management & Compliance: Achieved PCI Compliance and completed an independent network security assessment among other audits; completed a full cycle of vulnerability management without incidents and hardened the City’s infrastructure; conducted multiple cybersecurity trainings citywide and tabletop exercises; and secured a State Cyber Security Grant to continue hardening critical areas of the infrastructure.
• New ITSM AI-Powered System; Intranet Platform Redesign: Upgraded the City’s IT Service Management and Ticketing system and began the revamping of the employee Intranet platform and internal service portal.
• SDLC & DevOps: Developed multiple homegrown software applications and GIS systems for various city functions and departments, including a Police Training software, a Citizen Crime Map portal, Passport Office software update, a Santa Tracker for Fire Department Santa visits to children at their neighborhoods, new permit statistic reports, Digital Twin platform upgrade, built a Tree of the Year partner program with Greenspace Management issuing Tree of the Year commemorative NFTs, LiDAR scan and 3D construction of Public Works as a unique digital twin, 3D Drone Flight creation of Centennial sites and City facilities and landmarks, Historical Resources data presentation and analysis, among other software engineering projects.
• ITSM, ITOps & ITAM: Responded to and addressed over 2,000 IT service support tickets received from internal and external customers; implemented over 60 medium-to-large enterprise IT projects; and maintained and supported a comprehensive indoor and outdoor technology infrastructure throughout city districts, buildings and facilities, including over 2,900 hardware equipment/devices (servers, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, routers/switches, firewalls/filters/gateways, wireless, phones, storage, audio/video, cameras, and trailers), and over 180 off-the-shelf and homegrown enterprise software applications.
• The City of Coral Gables officially earned full certification as an Intelligent Community from the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), becoming only the second city in the U.S. to receive this prestigious recognition. The city was also named one of the Top 7 Intelligent Communities in the world for two consecutive years (2023 and 2024), based on a rigorous evaluation in six key areas: Connectivity & Broadband, Tech & Knowledge Workforce, Innovation, Digital Inclusion, Sustainability, Community Engagement. With an impressive overall score of 95/100, these milestones reflect Coral Gables’ commitment to innovation, inclusion and smart city leadership on a global scale. These initiatives collectively enhance the quality of life and economic opportunities for residents and businesses alike. The city's strategic investments in smart city infrastructure, including innovation districts and advanced technologies, have positioned it as a leader in urban development.
• STEM Talent & Workforce Development: Worked with Economic Development, Gables TechTank incubator partners, CGIT Lab team, Miami Tech Talent organizations, education partners (UM, FIU, MDC, 4Geeks Academy, Coral Gables High School, and others) and industry partners (Microsoft, Salesforce, and others) developing tech talent and internship programs, conducting hackathons and other education events, and connecting local talent with jobs and career development opportunities.
• AutonomIA Years 2 & 3 Milestones: Completed Year-2 milestones and kicked off Year-3 phase in Coral Gables of the Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA) traffic/energy AI optimization project – funded by the U.S. DOE Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E) – with scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), UC Berkeley, industry partners and City engineers from the City of Coral Gables Innovation & Technology and Public Works and Mobility departments. This exciting R&D project combines artificial intelligence, multiscale simulation, and real-time control to improve energy efficiencies and reduce energy expenditures, congestion, and emissions for regional transportation systems for multiple operational scenarios. Our project team is showcasing AutonomIA on a small-scale traffic network in Coral Gables for varying Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) penetration levels to demonstrate these gains. The teams have already developed a smart traffic network digital twin environment for various Coral Gables testbed traffic corridors (Ponce de Leon Blvd., Alhambra Cir., Miracle Mile), published scientific white papers (including a paper presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications IEEE ICMLA on December 2024 in Coral Gables), performed field testing, integrated the system with the Coral Gables Smart City Hub platform, and completed other key project milestones.
• R&D: Research collaboration with FIU for Green Stormwater Infrastructure at the City Facilities IT Lab campus, and with UM on a proposal to build digital twins for modeling and management of infrastructure systems and integrate the research into the Coral Gables Smart City Hub and Digital Twin platforms. Several other STEM research, education and lab internship partnerships and smart city collaboration initiatives with University of Miami, Florida International University, NOVA University, Miami-Dade College, UC Berkeley, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Cities Today Institute (CTI), Smart Cities Council, Dense Networks Think Tank, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Department of State (DOS) and Department of Commerce (DOC), Advanced Research project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), World Business Angel Investment Forum (WBAF) Smart City Commission, 4Geeks Academy, Beyond Academics, and other organizations. Also, collaborated with IEEE and NIST in the development of engineering standards and frameworks for smart cities, emergency management and incident response, and with the Government AI (GovAI) Coalition on AI policies and use cases.
• NIST Strategic Plan & Framework for Smart Cities: Collaborated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, U.S. Department of Commerce) on the development of a federal strategic plan and frameworks for smart cities and incident management, published by NIST in 2024 and 2025. Worked together with the leaders of the Smart Cities program within the NIST Communications Technology Laboratory, the NIST Global Community Technology Challenge (GCTC) think tank, and George Mason University (GMU) scientists developing the national strategic foundation. NIST published a new strategic plan for its Smart Cities program in 2024 and several papers in 2025, which reference Coral Gables contribution and smart city case studies.
Projects Executed in 2024:
• Technology engineering and provisioning milestones for ongoing building projects: Minorca Parking Garage 7, Coral Gables Country Club, Granada Pro Shop, City Hall renovation, Passport Office renovation, 338 Minorca Ave. Office, New Fire Station 4; Parking, Finance, HR office relocations and reprovisioning, and others.
• CloudSuite ERP GHR, WFM, and Budget Go-Live: Working with Finance, Human Resources, project Executive Steering Team and Working Groups, completed the implementation and go-live of the Global HR (GHR), Workforce Management (WFM) / Payroll, and Questica Budget Preparation components of the City’s new Core Financial, HR and Supply Chain Enterprise System (INFOR CloudSuite ERP). These successful cutovers completed the implementation of the City’s ERP Cloud Suite project. This enterprise business capabilities (EBC) advanced system completes the transition to paperless processes and digital efficiencies citywide, integrating with several other enterprise systems recently implemented in key areas such as e-permitting, infrastructure services, community recreation, waste management, public safety, citizen engagement, & asset management.
• Broadband Fiber Corridors and Public Wi-Fi Expansion: Completed Phase I (Alhambra Circle Financial Corridor) and Phase II (Ponce de Leon and University Drive commercial corridor), building additional fiber optics segments to connect multiple city buildings and facilities and install additional smart city poles to enhance connectivity, mobility, public safety, network resilience, situational awareness, digital inclusion, and citizen services, and foster innovation, quality of life programs and economic opportunities with a regional impact.
• New Smart City AI-powered Modular Pole: the new pole, featuring the Coral Gables v3 award-winning custom industrial design was installed in the Alhambra Cir. financial corridor, at the intersection with LeJeune Road This new design was created as a collaboration between our City, Ekin, and Pininfarina, with SME advice from the University of Miami School of Architecture. The CGIT team worked with engineers and contractors installing the new pole (the second in the corridor). This new pole –connected to the City’s Community Intelligence Center (CIC)– provides free public Wi-Fi, CCTV, traffic/environmental IoT sensor data and traffic safety automation, and enhances public safety in that busy area of our central business district.
• New Police/Fire/911 CAD & RMS Cloud-Native Platform: Working with Police, Fire and 911 Communications, implemented the final phase of the new Police/Fire/911 CAD and RMS cloud suite (Mark43) for its June 2024 go-live. The new smart public safety cloud-native system features advanced and smart data reporting, mobile applications, systems integration and interoperability, with a robust and resilient platform and automated electronic process capabilities and functionalities for public safety. Its modern user interface provides seamless experience for users, with accessible and integrated up-to-date geospatial information, and advanced record management capabilities with streamlined workflows, intuitive search, and native record format validations.
• Multiple Network and Computer Upgrades and Additions: Over 250 user computers and end-point devices deployed citywide; 25 additional CCTV Cameras deployed to control illegal dumping in residential neighborhoods; Public Safety trailers retrofit with camera upgrades and advanced analytics; Wireless Point to Point antennas city wide backhaul upgrade for higher bandwidth and stability (Region Bank, Alhambra Circle, UM one tower, Fire Station 3), Cartagena Circle and Ingraham Park public safety equipment upgrade with latest technology of Wireless Point to Point links, switches, CCTV cameras and sensors; Cocoplum bridge ALPR pole site upgrade with latest hardware and software; Deployment of cell signal boosters in various city facilities.
• ITSM, ITOps & ITAM: Responded to and addressed over 2,300 IT service support tickets received from internal and external customers; implemented over 50 medium-to-large enterprise IT projects; and maintained and supported a comprehensive indoor and outdoor technology infrastructure throughout city districts, buildings and facilities, including over 2,900 hardware equipment/devices (servers, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, routers/switches, firewalls/filters/gateways, wireless, phones, storage, audio/video, cameras, and trailers), and over 190 off-the-shelf and homegrown enterprise software applications.
• Implemented Multiple GIS systems and improvements: Asset management data dashboards developed for Greenspace Management and Facilities Management businesses of Public Works; Launched revamped and improved Smart City Digital Twin GIS web application; Completed floodplain management system configuration and kicked-off API integration with the City’s permit system; Implemented Utilities field work in the Asset Management system; Developed new, improved email Public Notice secure web application.
• SDLC & DevOps: Developed multiple homegrown applications for various city functions and departments (public safety training system, data analytics dashboards, geospatial systems and apps, augmented reality and AI apps for residents and visitors, development services and public works digital tools, and other applications.)
• STEM Talent & Workforce Development: Worked with Economic Development, Gables TechTank incubator partners, CGIT Lab team, Miami Tech Talent organizations, and education partners (UM, FIU, MDC, Coral Gables High School, and others) developing tech talent and internship programs and connecting them with jobs and career development opportunities.
• Smart City Digital Twin Platform Redesign: CGIT reengineered the City’s Digital Twin smart city platform and implemented multiple upgrades and improvements in 2024: New advanced 3D photogrammetry and mapping and object modeling for buildings (BIM), RoW objects, trees are now visually represented with their real species in sync with our asset management systems, city trolleys dynamic visualization from integration with fleet management systems, smart city infrastructure (sensors, telecom, public Wi-Fi, smart lights, kiosks), city parks, green areas, streets/roads/RoW assets; better data integration and interoperability with the City’s enterprise systems (AM, EPL, ERP, CMS, smart parking systems, LiDAR photonics ROW StreetSmart digital environment, IoT urban analytics platform, Smart City Hub, County GIS and CIP/ROW projects/infrastructure/assets, external HPC's), AI-powered process automations, hundreds of 3D geospatial open datasets, integration with Google maps, Waze, and other GIS platforms, UX improvements and new menu layout and design.
• Phase 3 Reengineered Version of the AI Digital Assistant (AIDA): Recent enhancements include integration with Large Language Models (LLM) and improved ontology, heuristic, and Natural Language Programming (NLP) algorithms; integration with other bots across the City's enterprise systems and the launch of other AIDA personas such as our new 311 CRM chatbot and the City Website chatbot. AIDA was initially developed in 2021 as part of the NSF-funded STIR Labs initiative, by a government-academia joint research team integrated by our CGIT team, researchers from University of West Virginia Human-Computer Interaction Lab (WVU-HCI) led by world-renowned AI and HCI expert Dr. Saiph Savage (MIT, WVU, NWU), the UC Berkeley Innovation Group (BIG), Stanford University, and the City Innovate STIR Labs cohort. In Phase 2 (2021-22), CGIT collaborated with graduate students from University of Miami's Institute of Data Science and Computing (UM-IDSC) enhancing AIDA's NLP models and decision/recommendation engine; and in Phase 3 (2023), CGIT reengineered AIDA with the latest enhancements and integrations mentioned above.
• AutonomIA Years 1 & 2 Milestones: Completed Year-1 milestones and kicked off Year-2 phase in Coral Gables of the Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA) traffic/energy AI optimization project – funded by the U.S. DOE Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E) – with scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), UC Berkeley, industry partners and City engineers from the City of Coral Gables Innovation & Technology and Public Works departments. This exciting R&D project combines artificial intelligence, multiscale simulation, and real-time control to improve energy efficiencies and reduce energy expenditures, congestion, and emissions for regional transportation systems for multiple operational scenarios. Our project team is showcasing AutonomIA on a small-scale traffic network in Coral Gables for varying Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) penetration levels to demonstrate these gains. Project execution is undergoing, and the teams have already developed a smart traffic network digital twin environment for various Coral Gables testbed traffic corridors (Ponce de Leon Blvd., Alhambra Cir., and Miracle Mile), published scientific white papers, started field testing, and completed other key project milestones.
• NIST Strategic Plan & Framework for Smart Cities: Collaborated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, U.S. DOC) on the development of a federal strategic plan and framework for smart cities, published by NIST in 2024. Worked together with the leaders of the Smart Cities program within the NIST Communications Technology Laboratory, the NIST Global Community Technology Challenge (GCTC) think tank, and George Mason University (GMU) scientists developing the national strategic foundation. NIST published a new strategic plan for its Smart Cities program in 2024, which references Coral Gables contribution and smart city case studies. The plan was made available for public comment on the federal NIST webpages.
• Several STEM research, education and lab internship partnerships and smart city collaboration initiatives with University of Miami, Florida International University, NOVA University, Miami-Dade College, UC Berkeley, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Cities Today Institute (CTI), Smart Cities Council, Dense Networks Think Tank, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Department of State (DOS) and Department of Commerce (DOC), Advanced Research project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), World Business Angel Investment Forum (WBAF) Smart City Commission, 4Geeks Academy, Beyond Academics, and other organizations. Also, collaborated with IEEE and NIST in the development of engineering standards and frameworks for smart cities, emergency management and incident response.
Projects Executed in 2023:
• Smart City Digital Twin Platform Redesign: The City of Coral Gables Innovation and Technology team (CGIT) reengineered the City’s Digital Twin smart city platform and implemented multiple upgrades and improvements that went live in December 2023: New advanced 3D photogrammetry and mapping and object modeling for buildings (BIM), RoW objects, trees are now visually represented with their real species in sync with our asset management systems, city trolleys dynamic visualization from integration with fleet management systems, smart city infrastructure (sensors, telecom, public Wi-Fi, smart lights, kiosks), city parks, green areas, streets/roads/RoW assets; better data integration and interoperability with the City’s enterprise systems (AM, EPL, ERP, CMS, smart parking systems, LiDAR photonics ROW StreetSmart digital environment, IoT urban analytics platform, Smart City Hub, County GIS and CIP/ROW projects/infrastructure/assets, external HPC's), AI-powered process automations, hundreds of 3D geospatial open datasets, integration with Google maps, Waze, and other GIS platforms, UX improvements and new menu layout and design.
• Five-Year Anniversary of Coral Gables Smart City Hub Public Platform – Hub User Experience & Web Portal Redesign: To celebrate the five-year anniversary of the Coral Gables Smart City Hub public platform, the City’s Innovation and Technology Department (CGIT) engaged and worked with UX designers and HCI experts to improve the Hub’s front-end web portal design and usability, making it more navigable for users and aligning its looks with the City’s new digital experience platform (DXP) coralgables.com website that was launched last year. When it was launched in Q2 2018, the Coral Gables Smart City Hub broke ground as a one-of-its-kind digital supermarket and collaboration workspace for a beautiful and smart city, aggregating a multitude of tools and actionable information in one single portal that delivers value, digital services, open data and open API’s, transparency and business intelligence dashboards, citizen engagement tools, community initiatives, a mobile app store, geographic information systems and mapping apps, a community intelligence center, and egovernment services for digital efficiencies, sustainability and user convenience. The Coral Gables Smart City Hub concept was first introduced in 2016 by CGIT on the City’s Innovation and Technology Strategic Plan as an abstract paradigm that continually delivers value to our smart city ecosystem stakeholders, streaming from the top cyberinfrastructure layer of the Coral Gables Smart City Engineering Framework. To implement that vision, in 2017 our CGIT team engineered and developed the platform and its enterprise system data integrations inhouse, and launched it on the second quarter of 2018 after internal R&D and beta testing. Over the past five years since its launch, the Coral Gables Smart City Hub has become a case study in technical books, scientific journals, research papers and other professional publications, and has received continued recognition from professional organizations and media. The Hub has been extensively utilized by city residents, businesses, employees, students, researchers, visitors, urban planners, emergency managers, first responders, officials, decision-makers, entrepreneurs, startups, community organizations and project stakeholders to connect with city resources and data insight, engage, and collaborate on community initiatives to improve quality of life and foster innovation and economic growth for our communities.
• New Core Financial, Supply Chain, HR and Workforce Management Enterprise System (Infor Cloud Suite FSM/GHR/WFM) Went Live: The City of Coral Gables Finance, Human Resources, and Innovation & Technology departments worked together with all city departments and industry experts completing the implementation and go-live of the final components of the City’s ERP Cloud Suite. Finance and Supply Chain Management went live on March 2023. GHR and WFM went live on December 2023. This advanced enterprise business capabilities post-modern ERP cloud suite completes the transition to paperless processes and digital efficiencies citywide, integrating with several other enterprise systems implemented in key areas such as infrastructure services, community recreation, electronic permitting, public safety, and asset management.
• City of Coral Gables New Mobile App, AI Chatbot, and CRM/311 Citizen Request System Went Live: The Innovation and Technology department worked with the Office of Communication and the City Clerk’s Office, with input from citizen advisory boards, completing the implementation of the City’s new state-of-the-art mobile app / 311 digital experience platform and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system (Salesforce 311), with modern user experience, advanced app functionalities (chatbot, location aware integrations) and communication capabilities.
• Gables TechTank Initiative and P3 MOU: Through this new initiative, the City along with its partners, hope to bridge the tech talent gap in our city by facilitating the upskilling of professionals through training programs. The goal is to provide reliable, sustainable sources of technical talent, data, services, and innovative solutions to organizations located within the City of Coral Gables. Of the tech companies that responded to the City’s
technical talent needs survey, almost 50% rated Cybersecurity, Data Science, AI and Machine Learning, and Full-Stack Development as essential skills. Through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), 4Geeks LLC, TalentFarm / Beyond Academics, and the City of Coral Gables will collaborate to understand the tech needs of the business community, create syllabi to address the technical skills needed of the labor force and provide the training with certificates and credentials.
• Building Projects Technology Planning, Engineering, and Provisioning Milestones: Minorca Parking Garage, City Hall and Passport Office renovation, Development Services Center, Coral Gables Country Club, Granada Golf, Mobility Hub design phase, new Fire Station 4.
• Construction work on a broadband and public Wi-Fi expansion project, that is building 26 additional fiber optics segments to connect multiple city buildings and facilities and install additional smart city poles to improve/enhance connectivity, mobility, public safety, network resilience, situational awareness, digital inclusion, citizen services, and foster innovation, quality of life programs and economic opportunities for the entire community, with a regional impact. Alhambra Circle (Financial District) fiber corridor completed.
• New functions/modules for the City’s Enterprise Permits and Land Management system: Working with Development Services department, implemented a Code Enforcement 311 requests portal and electronic process, and Electronic Plan Review CAD integration. Also, implemented a new queuing system and customer waiting time dashboard for the Development Services Ctr.
• New Priority Dispatch system for Police and Fire 911 Communications: working with Police, Fire, and 911 Communications, completed the system implementation and go-live. The system and the new electronic process went live on April, 2023.
• New Smart City Waste Management System: working with Public Works, implemented the Rubicon smart waste management system, to bring digital efficiencies and innovation in citywide sustainable waste management, recycling, and operations.
• Public Wi-Fi at Pittman Park (Alhambra Cir Financial District) completed.
• Trolley fleet technology upgrades/additions: i. Deployed Wi-Fi service inside the Trolleys; ii. Implemented automated people counter (APC); iii. Live Data dashboards and Analytics.
• Completed several Smart Lighting Upgrades and Additions: i. Migrated the Miracle Mile Smart Lighting controllers to a new app for improved asset and energy management and data reporting; ii. Integrated the City’s Smart Lighting assets with the Urban Analytics AI Platform and deployed live lighting assets and energy efficiency dashboards in the Smart City Hub public platform.
• Installed multiple CCTV additions to enhance public safety and code enforcement: i Rotary Park & Catalonia Park CCTV cameras installations completed; ii Solar Cellular CCTV cameras deployment in several blocks to monitor Illegal dumping; iii San Sebastian/Monegro CCTV camera installed. The new camera feeds were integrated with the Community Intelligence Center (CIC).
• Implemented multiple Cyberinfrastructure Upgrades/Additions: i. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) enhancement; ii. Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) enhancement; iii. Single-Sign-on (SSO) cybersecurity integration with various city apps; iv. Active Directory (AD) management and reporting cybersecurity solution; v. Hyperconverged Datacenter Infrastructure Upgrade; vi. Security Cloud enhancements for data backup protection, risk analysis and monitoring; vii. Automatic Call Attendant implementation for main numbers at Building and Zoning, City Hall, and Finance Department; viii. Country Club point of sale (POS) software implementation to allow restaurant operations by the city; ix. Deployment of new fingerprint scanner system for Police; x. Implementation of Crash Mapping system, and Police Record Management standard, and integration with the City’s Public Safety systems; xi. New smart city public kiosks additions in collaboration with Public Works, Economic Development and City Clerk’s Office (City Hall, Alhambra Cir., Ponce Circle Park / The Plaza.)
• Implemented new functions and modules for the City’s Asset Management System (OpenGov/Cartegraph): Public Works Utilities, Public Works Greenspace, and Property Management services. Provided administrative training, additional tablets and mobile App deployment, application configuration, GIS layers and forms design, interactive web site resource design, and optimized/automated workflows.
• Content Management system horizontal integration with Electronic Permits, GIS platforms and CGIT’s homegrown smart city platforms (Digital Twin and Smart City Hub) to improve efficiencies, interoperability, and accessibility of property records.
• Implemented several GIS systems and improvements: i. Web experience builder app for Development Agreements/Covenants; ii. Transportation Data Management portals (Speeds & Volumes) for PW; iii. Public Map of Coral Gables Traffic Calming Zones; iv Property Tax Value Analysis for Economic Development / CBD; v Art in Public Places technologies for Historic Resources; vi Pine Bay area road name updates in Google maps; vii New GIS Lab internships; viii. Completed a PSD Geospatial Maturity Index benchmark assessment and received the 2022 GMI Award; ix Received GISCI Endorsing Designation from the GIS Certification Institute; x Enhancements to the digital twin platform 3D layers and the Public Works GIS Portal
• Finalized audiovisual (AV) equipment retrofitting at various City facilities: i. Community Meeting Room (CMR) in the Police & Fire HQ building; ii. Fairchild/BOA conference room in the Development Services Ctr. building; iii. Other City conference rooms/offices.
• Developed multiple homegrown applications for city functions and departments: i. Police Property Evidence log application; ii. Crime View & Analysis dashboards; iii. Smart City Hub AIDA bot integration with OpenAI ChatGPT/GPT4 API; iv. Passport Data Submittal System to transmit applications to the U.S. Department of State; v. Several GIS apps.
• Upgraded the communications technology of the Coral Gables Police Mobile Command Center and supported its deployment at Carnival on the Mile event and Hurricane Ian mutual aid operations with CGPD, CGFD & CGIT in Lee County (Ft. Myers, Sanibel).
• Manufacturing production of the City’s new smart city poles which feature the Coral Gables industrial design developed with world-renowned design firm Pininfarina and innovative smart city electronics engineering firm Ekin. The City’s modular AI-powered poles now incorporate The City Beautiful unique brand and Mediterranean revival aesthetic. Manufacturing CAD 3D design and tooling were created for industrial production and prototypes. First poles of the new designs are being installed at various city parks and street intersections to enhance public Wi-Fi access, public safety, traffic management and environmental control.
• National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) City of Coral Gables Smart City Technology Case Studies: City of Coral Gables Innovation & Technology team projects and smart city case studies were featured by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the June 2023 and November 2022 issues of the NIST Smart Connected Systems Newsletter: “NIST’s GCTC Leaders and Member Cities Participate in Smart City Workshop at the Western Hemisphere Cities Summit of the Americas” (June 2023), “Getting Real – Smart Transportation in the City of Coral Gables, Florida” (June 2023), “NIST GCTC Members Highlight Coral Gables' Use of Digital Technologies at Smart City Expo” (November 2022). NIST previously featured a case study about the Coral Gables smart city hub platform in their 1900-204 Cyber-Physical Systems Report (December 2019.)
• CGIT Collaboration with Miami-Dade College Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center: Following the visit back in June of Miami-Dade College’s Director of AI to the City of Coral Gables Innovation and Technology department, Coral Gables CIO visited Miami Dade College (MDC) AI Center, received a guided tour and met some of the students, and continued consolidating new collaboration programs between MDC and our CGIT team on applied-AI and smart city services.
• CGIT Hosts AutonomIA R&D Project Workshop (U.S. DOE, PNNL, Coral Gables, ARPA-E, UC Berkeley, Industry) The City’s Innovation and Technology department team (CGIT) hosted a visiting delegation from the U.S. DOE, PNNL, ARPA-E, UC Berkeley, and industry partners (Siemens/Yunex, AIMSUM, TTS) who came to Coral Gables to work on the Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA) traffic/energy optimization project with City engineers and other experts from the Innovation & Technology and Public Works departments. This exciting R&D project combines artificial intelligence, multiscale simulation, and real-time control to improve energy efficiencies and reduce energy expenditures, congestion, and emissions for regional transportation systems for multiple operational scenarios. Our project team will showcase AutonomIA on a small-scale traffic network in Coral Gables for varying Connected and Automated Vehicles penetration levels to demonstrate these gains.
• AutonomIA Project at ARPA-e NEXTCAR Industry Day in Detroit and Energy Innovation Summit in D.C.: CGIT joined the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) presenting the Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA) research project in a panel of experts at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-e) NEXTCAR Industry Day 2023 in Detroit (Next-Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Automated On-Road Vehicles) and at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit in Washington D.C. Our project in Coral Gables combines artificial intelligence, multiscale simulation, and real-time control to improve energy efficiencies and reduce energy expenditures, congestion, and emissions for regional transportation systems for multiple operational scenarios.
Projects Executed in 2022:
• New City Website, Digital Experience Platform (DXP) Went Live: www.coralgables.com - Working with the Communications department and the City Clerk’s Office, completed the design and implementation of the City’s new website and Drupal DXP platform. After a month of public beta testing and polling, the new city site went live with a much more user-focused interface. The new site's goal is to assist visitors in easily locating information, while also updating the look and feel of the site. This website was built on a state-of-the-art digital experience platform (Drupal DXP) with improved service-oriented design, citizen services directory, enhanced features and functionalities, advanced search function, integration with city applications, streamlined content, and new video and photography showcasing the City Beautiful’s nature, historic landmarks, gorgeous residential areas, and vibrant business and arts and culture districts.
• Smart Waste Management enterprise system - Working with Public Works, completed a successful pilot and started implementation of the City’s new Smart Waste Management enterprise system.
• Building Construction Technology and Telecommunications Provisioning: i. Minorca Garage (PG7) smart parking and building technology infrastructure design specs, SOW, BOM and procurement of equipment and professional services. Started IT provisioning. | ii. Passport renovation technology infrastructure design proposals completed. Began procurement of equipment and services. | iii. Coral Gables Golf and Country Club network infrastructure, Wi-Fi, CCTV and alarms, LeParc Café point of sale system. | iv. City Hall renovation technology infrastructure design, specs, engineering drawings. Started IT provisioning phase with the project team. | v. Community Meeting Room (CMR) AV system technology provisioning (cameras, mics, control room console/switchboard system, fiber run and low voltage wiring). | vi. Development Services Center technology provisioning. | vii. Board of Architects room AV phase 2 system improvements and retrofitting of existing AV technology. | viii. Granada Pro Shop. | ix. Fire Station 4. | x. Completed the construction and go-live of new fiber optics corridors connecting Alhambra Circle, Ponce de Leon, and other nodes.
• New Development Services Center Smart Building Technology Provisioning, Electronic Plan Review: The new Development Services Center serves as a one-stop for all permitting, code enforcement, planning and zoning needs. The new facility allows the Building Department to modernize and streamline the permitting process and reduce the use of paper. After the move, hard copies of plans and applications are no longer accepted. All submittals are now electronic including the processing of digitally signed and sealed plans for all permits. New and advanced technology infrastructure was provisioned by CGIT at these new/renovated facilities, including: fiber optics network, network and telecom redundancy/resilience, high-speed smart network electronics, new electronic plan review stations, enterprise systems and applications, consoles and computer stations, Wi-Fi network, IP telephony, TV systems, digital kiosks, security systems, and other cyberinfrastructure.
• New Homegrown Smart City Digital Twin Platform and Horizontal Integration Dashboards: CGIT developed a Smart City Digital Twin platform with Horizontal Integration Dashboards. The new homegrown digital twin platform merges the Coral Gables smart city hub public platform, the City’s urban analytics Artificial Intelligence (AI) Internet of Things (IoT) platform, citywide enterprise systems and open data, and a 3D horizontal integration spatial computing platform. This architecture fosters interoperability in real time and connects the dots between all the city's enterprise systems and data domains to improve operational efficiencies and citizen access to digital services. It also allows for integration with building information models and immersive virtual reality user experience navigation for operations, inspections, monitoring, and control.
• Additions to the Smart City Hub Public Platform: i. Curbside management smart parking homegrown pilot solution in Downtown Coral Gables, developed by CGIT network engineers using computer vision AI and ML to detect occupied and available curbside street parking spaces. | ii. Integrations with Digital Twin functions. More: Curbside management smart parking homegrown pilot IoT dashboard. | iii. Additional IoT sensor dashboards in the urban analytics AI section. | iv. Public Works GIS Hub data, apps and geospatial analytics for operations and actionable insight. | v. Citizen services building wait time dashboards.
• Provisioned the technology for the Coral Gables Police state-of-the-art new Mobile Command Center and supported its deployment at Carnival on the Mile event and emergency response and mutual aid operations.
• Developed multiple homegrown systems and applications: i. Crime Analysis Dashboard and Viewer portal for the Police Department; ii. Digital Twin smart city platform with Citywide Horizontal Integration dashboards; iii. Customer service application for the new Development Services Center; iv. GIS applications: Utility coordination GIS maps with Miami-Dade County, Smart districts infrastructure GIS map, Planning & zoning
apps, Location-based notifications apps, Fee/tax impact calculator apps, Curb management IoT integration dashboard; v. Public sentiment analytics situational awareness dashboard; vi. New modules of the Lobbyist system; vii. Automatic incident reports for Police; viii. Hub Initiatives for citizen engagement.
• New 311 City Mobile App Project Implementation Started: The project steering team –integrated by City Manager’s Office, City Clerk’s Office, Office of Communication, and the Innovation & Technology Department–started the implementation of the City’s new state-of-the-art mobile app / 311 digital experience platform and Customer Relationship Management (Salesforce CRM) system, with modern UX, advanced app functionalities (AI chatbot, location-aware integrations) and communication capabilities. CGIT’s scope, research, analysis, selection, and preliminary design were reviewed with the project steering team and citizen advisory board.
• CGPD, CGFD, CGIT began implementation of the new Police/Fire/911 CAD and RMS Cloud Suite System: The new smart public safety cloud-native system being implemented features advanced and smart data reporting, mobile applications, systems integration and interoperability, with a robust and resilient platform, automated electronic process capabilities and functionalities for public safety. The modern user interface provides a seamless experience for users, with accessible integrated up-to-date geospatial information, and advanced record management capabilities with streamlined workflows, intuitive search, and native NIBRS validation.
• Upgraded the city’s smart city poles with new modules and next generation technology: nano-hotspot with 5G, LTE and P2MP wireless, new environmental sensors, and 12MP cameras. Implemented a new IoT Solar trailer for traffic and mobility studies.
• Completed an industrial design project with Pininfarina and Ekin, with advice from University of Miami, to redesign the City’s modular AI-powered poles to incorporate the city’s brand and aesthetics. Manufacturing CAD 3D design molds/tooling created for industrial production and prototypes.
• Working with Development Services, implemented the electronic plan review and code enforcement modules of the City’s electronic permit system, and supported the opening of the new Development Services Center.
• Working with various City departments (Finance, Human Resources, Executive Steering Team), completed major milestones of the User Acceptance Training (UAT) and System Integration testing (SIT) phases of the City’s new Core Financial and HR Enterprise System (Infor CloudSuite). This enterprise business capabilities (EBC) advanced system will complete the transition to paperless processes and digital efficiencies citywide, integrating with other enterprise systems implemented in key functional areas.
• Reengineered the Situational Awareness Dashboards of the Smart City Hub public platform with new traffic awareness dashboards (in Collaboration with University of Miami Institute of Data Science and Computing), new traffic and environmental sensor dashboards, and public sentiment analytics dashboards (developed by CGIT software engineers.) This tool provides valuable insight for first responders, traffic engineers, urban planners, and the public in general.
• Created a GIS Innovation Lab at the IT Department 72nd Ave office, and initiated multiple R&D pilots, prototypes and experiments on 3D spatial computing, digital twins, augmented/assisted/virtual reality, blockchain, Knowledge Graphs and Web3 smart city use cases.
• Several upgrades to the City’s cyberinfrastructure completed: i. Improved and enhanced the City’s cybersecurity, network, and telecommunication infrastructure; ii. Wi-Fi network expansions; iii. Payment Card Industry (PCI) annual compliance program and other network audits; iv. CJIS and FDLE audit; v. Provisioning of smart lights (CCTV, IoT, public announcements) at multiple street-ends in the Monegro corridor (Aledo, Sarto); vi. Granada and 8th St ALPR and CCTV Pole, vii. Miracle Mile network electronics upgrade, viii. City Wide phone system upgrade, ix. New cloud Cashiering system, and other upgrades.
• Completed the implementation of the City’s new Real Property Portfolio System (OpenGov/Cartegraph PPM).
• Implemented a new customer queueing system for the Development Services Center and a new customer registration system for the Youth Center’s DMV “Florida License on Wheels” (FLOW) operations.
• Research Collaboration Project with the Department of Energy and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: The City’s Innovation and Technology department (CGIT) started a research collaboration in January 2022 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), UC Berkeley and industry partners on advanced traffic data analytics and optimization and applied A.I. and machine learning. The research team will study intelligent traffic signals that can communicate in real time with connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and urban computing systems to improve energy efficiencies and reduce energy expenditures, congestion, and emissions for regional transportation systems for multiple operational scenarios. The project, titled: “Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA): Resilient and
Energy-Efficient City-wide Transportation Operations”, was selected for funding by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) -it’s the only project selected in the category of Transportation Networks. This R&D project will develop a vehicle-to-signal communication and control test corridor and small-scale traffic network in Coral Gables, in the smart district areas where CGIT has installed fiber optics and smart city AI-powered poles and traffic sensors that already collect real-time traffic data and feed the Coral Gables Smart City Hub Urban Analytics AI platform traffic dashboards.
• Several STEM research and education partnerships and collaboration initiatives with UM, FIU, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, DOE, PNNL, U.S. Census COIL, NIST, WBAF, Strata.AI (Data Science and AI education MOU), GBA, and other organizations.
• Completed an engineering study for the future replacement of the telecommunications tower and backup power generator at Fire Station 3, which produced scope of work and best practice recommendations including Local zoning (City) and federal (FAA, FCC) regulations, State Agency's (FDOT, SHPO) coordination, City Fire Department Coordination, Environmental Regulations (Local, State and Federal), Commercial carrier coordination, utilities (electric, water, sewer, telco etc.)
• New Signs with a QR Code Installed at Trolley Stops, and Trolley Fleet Technology Upgrade: New signs with a QR code were installed at trolley stops which take users to a live app that shows where all the trolleys are and when they will arrive at a selected stop, significantly improving the customer experience. Also, the communications technology inside the trolleys was upgraded in June 2022.
• Expansion of City of Coral Gables Public Wi-Fi Network: CGIT continued expanding the City’s public Wi-Fi network as a part of the Smart Districts – Broadband Infrastructure Expansion Project. CGIT added a public WiFi access point outside of the Coral Gables Museum, where it provides free public internet access in the open area of the museum, where outdoor events are held and public art is exhibited, as well as to sections of Salzedo Street and Aragon Avenue. CGIT has now completed 20 public Wi-Fi sites including Miracle Mile, the Venetian Pool, and Giralda Plaza. Phillips Park and the Alhambra Circle financial corridor are currently in progress. They also plan on bringing public Wi-Fi to the Coral Gables Art Cinema, Centennial Park, parking garages 1 and 4, the Ponce de Leon corridor, the Andalusia mobility corridor, and the Aragon Arts and Culture corridor.
• Reengineering of the Smart City Hub Situational Awareness Dashboards: The Situational Awareness Dashboards of the Coral Gables Smart City Hub public platform were reengineered and enhanced with new data dashboards and analytics on traffic, weather/environment, and public sentiment. Improvements and enhancements done include: i. Coral Gables Waze CCP Traffic Awareness Dashboard: A research project collaboration between City of Coral Gables Innovation & Technology Department (CGIT), University of Miami Institute of Data Science and Computing (UM IDSC), and the Waze Connected Citizens Program (Waze CCP). The reengineered dashboard is a Beta prototype that analyzes and presents Coral Gables and Miami-Dade County traffic data and metrics from accidents, hazards, traffic jams, and road closed from external sources such as the Waze CCP platform. This dashboard augments with crowdsourced data the existing real-time traffic data and analytics from city sensors; ii. Traffic Analytics from the City’s IoT sensor network: real-time traffic data and analytics from city traffic sensors (already presented in the smart city hub urban analytics AI IoT platform section.); iii. Coral Gables Hyperlocal IoT Weather Data Dashboards: Real-time data dashboards of hyperlocal weather parameters (wind speed/profile, solar radiation, rainfall, temp/pressure/humidity, etc.) in public safety facilities, from systems like the scientific-grade/NIST-traceable multi-sensor environmental IoT weather station at the City’s Public Safety Smart Building. iv. Public Sentiment Analytics Dashboards: Public Sentiment data dashboards from AI & ML analytic platforms for both public sources and internal citizen service requests and CRM systems. These dashboards were developed by CGIT’s software engineers, leveraging APIs from the City’s public sentiment analytics AI platform (ZenCity) and the City’s citizen engagement and customer connect CRM platforms.
• Expansion of Smart City Environmental IoT Sensors and Analytics in Coral Gables: CGIT continued expanding the Coral Gables smart city environmental sensing technology infrastructure, with additional Internet of Things (IoT) environmental sensors distributed through multiple devices and IoT/CPS end points such as smart city AIpowered modular poles, smart city kiosks, IoT water sensor buoy systems, hyperlocal scientific-grade/NISTtraceable multi-sensor environmental IoT weather stations, and environmental monitoring networks in collaboration with water scientists from Florida International University (FIU) Institute of Environment, the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (SECOORA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the WeatherLink network, and other organizations. The abovementioned city systems measure air quality (carbon
emissions, pollutants/particulate, VOC, etc.) in the Coral Gables Downtown area; water quality (electrochemical parameters, density, pH, salinity, resistivity, etc.) and water level (flood detection/alerts) in water canals and coastal areas; hyperlocal weather parameters (wind speed/profile, solar radiation, rainfall, temp/pressure/humidity, etc.) in public safety facilities; and other cyber-physical systems and data sources. Environmental IoT sensor data is aggregated and analyzed in the Coral Gables smart city hub public platform and urban analytics AI IoT platform where real-time and environmental data dashboards and predictive analytics are provided to residents, researchers, emergency managers and city engineers. This data is also used by CGIT to analyze the viability of alternative power sources for network nodes, such as wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) solar panels.
• New smart lights, Safety Cameras and Traffic Sensor Poles: CGIT completed the installation and cutover of multiple smart lighting, CCTV/IoT poles and traffic sensor systems. Some of the benefits and areas of positive impact are: public safety, traffic safety/management/engineering, mobility, energy management/efficiency, data value for residents and businesses, and smart parking. All these technologies were connected and integrated to the Community Intelligence Center (CIC) at the City’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and the smart city hub and urban analytics AI platforms. Some of the technologies deployed include: i. Completed, went live in February-March 2022: 2 new, additional smart light poles at the Monegro corridor street-end gates, enhancing public safety in that neighborhood residential area: Sarto Ave., Aledo Ave. Also, a CCTV camera was installed at the San Sebastian Ave. gate. The technology of these smart lights include CCTV cameras, motion sensors, loudspeaker, network connectivity, control, data analytics, and IoT sensing integration; ii. Completed, went live in January 2022: 6 new, additional optical sensor poles with CCTV cameras and edge analytics AI (traffic counters), enhancing public safety and traffic safety at busy parks, roads, and intersections: 2 at Ferdinand Park East/ West; 2 at Granada and 8th St; 2 at Granada and Bird Rd; 2 ALPRs also at Granada and 8th St. The technology of these smart sensor poles includes CCTV cameras, artificial intelligence and computer vision, control, data analytics, IoT sensing integration (multimodal traffic sensor edge analytics and safety sensors). iii. Integrated previous smart lighting technologies deployed in 2019, 2020 and 2021: 3 smart lights were implemented at Romano Ave., Camilo Ave., Cadima Ave street-end gates and more than 50 smart lights and smart lighting controllers with energy efficiency management, Industrial IoT sensor integration, urban analytics AI platform, automated features such as LED light status reporting and energy use analytics, predictive analytics of light burn, and other advanced features.
• Smart City Public Safety and Communications Technologies deployed at Carnival on the Mile event: The Coral Gables Police, Fire, Community Recreation, and Innovation & Technology departments deployed multiple smart city public safety technologies during the Carnival on the Mile event, to enhance safety and connectivity for all attendees, participating organizations, and support personnel. Those technologies included the new Mobile Command Post, public Wi-Fi, fiber and satellite communications, public safety CCTV cameras, traffic IoT and environmental sensors, smart city kiosks, mobile apps, and other technologies.
• Kickoff of the Coral Gables Smart Districts Fiber Corridors and Smart Poles Expansion: Started execution of a broadband expansion project that is connecting multiple city buildings/facilities, and installing additional smart poles to improve connectivity, mobility, public safety, network resilience, situational awareness, digital inclusion, citizen services, quality of life and economic opportunities for our city. It covers the installation, connectivity, and turnkey of 26 additional fiber optics corridor segments and 8 additional smart city poles, to augment the existing fiber corridors and smart city IoT sensors installed citywide in previous years. It also expands the City's current technology infrastructure to provide additional broadband and communications capacity, hyper-connectivity, automation and efficiencies for public safety, mobility, digital inclusion, economic development, tech entrepreneurship, telehealth, education, and other quality of life impacts. The new AIpowered smart city poles were engineered specifically for Coral Gables, with resistance to hurricane winds, 5G-enabled communications, public Wi-Fi, high-resolution cameras and traffic, safety and environmental sensors with AI edge analytics, and will incorporate the industrial design created for Coral Gables by renowned international design firm Pininfarina to align the technology infrastructure with the beauty and aesthetics of the Coral Gables brand and historic, Mediterranean-revival architecture character. Project phases: Phase 1: Financial Corridor on Alhambra Cir: 3 additional fiber segments + 1 additional smart city pole; Phase 2: Ponce de Leon and University corridors: 14 additional fiber segments + 5 additional smart poles; Phase 3: Mobility Corridor on Andalusia: 3 additional fiber segments + 1 additional smart city pole; Phase 4: Arts & Culture Corridor on Aragon, and Merrick Way: 5 additional fiber segments + 1 additional smart pole.
Projects Executed in 2021:
• New Public Safety Headquarters, Smart Building Technology Infrastructure Projects Cutover: Robust and advanced smart building technology infrastructure and telecommunications were provisioned for the new state-of-the-art Public Safety Headquarters (Police, Fire, e911 Communications Center, Emergency Operations Center, Community Intelligence Center, Communication Department / CGTV, and Innovation & Technology department); the new I.T. Primary Datacenter / City Network Headquarters; e911 PSAP upgrade and other smart building technology cutovers. Brand-new technology infrastructure and project management for this advanced facility included fiber optics corridors, core/distribution computer network with faster, smarter, safer, and more resilient/reliable backend cyberinfrastructure and electronics, low voltage wiring, computer networks, IPTV audio and video systems; Wi-Fi, sensors and actuators; cybersecurity and physical security systems; internet and voice/data circuits; Building Automation Systems, temperature screening kiosks with access control integration and employee facial recognition, dispatch consoles; in-depth network security assessment to validate the newly deployed infrastructure; and other smart building provisioning.
• New AI-Powered Smart City Modular Pole Goes Live, first of its kind in the U.S.: Our CGIT team installed the City’s first AI-powered smart city modular pole at a central location on the financial corridor in Downtown Coral Gables. This innovative pole (smart city furniture) was specifically engineered for Coral Gables and is the first one installed in the U.S. Its custom design incorporates our city's engineering standards (ASCE 7-10) and Florida building code wind load requirements, and our sensor and telecommunications technology interoperability requirements. This product won innovation awards at CES 2020 and 2021 and has a patented modular, integrated, aerodynamic, aesthetically pleasing all-in-one design that applies advanced aerospace engineering and science of material principles. Some of the services consolidated in this pole are public free Wi-Fi, CCTV, traffic and safety sensors (vehicles, pedestrian, multimodal, speed, red-light, public safety), environmental sensors (air quality, noise, weather), computer vision and AI IoT edge analytics and alerts. The pole started to provide live video and real-time analytics to the Coral Gables Smart City Hub public platform, the City’s Urban Analytics AI IoT platform, the City’s Community Intelligence Center (CIC) and regional Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at the Public Safety Headquarters. CGIT engineers started working on pole design improvements with the manufacturer and an industrial design firm, to be featured in the smart districts expanded corridors.
• New Fiber Optics Corridors and Smart Districts Urban Cyberinfrastructure Expansion: CGIT completed the construction and go-live of a new fiber optics corridor connecting smart/innovative districts A, B and C, Salzedo St., Sevilla Ave., Regions Bank node, Coral Gables Museum, Parking Garage 4, Parking Garage 1, Miracle Mile, City Hall, and the new I.T. network headquarters located at the New Public Safety Building. Engineering plans are underway to expand the City’s Smart Districts urban cyberinfrastructure and broadband in multiple phases leveraging CIP and grant funding. Some of these phases include: i. Financial/banking corridor on Alhambra Cir., with engineering, construction, provisioning and integration to connect the new Ekin Spotter v2 smart city pole (first pilot pole was installed at the intersection with Ponce de Leon); ii. Smart/Innovation/Mobility districts main corridor throughout Ponce de Leon (all district segments), to start in 2022 with engineering, construction, provisioning and integration to provide public Wi-Fi, public safety cameras and sensors (CCTV, ALPR, red-light, speed), IoT traffic/mobility sensors (vehicles, pedestrians, multimodal) and environmental sensors (air quality, noise) in the entire Ponce de Leon corridor that connects all the City’s smart districts and economic zones from Flagler (N) to the Underline/US-1 (S); iii. IoT and urban intelligence infrastructure (safety/traffic environmental sensors, smart poles) and public Wi-Fi mesh network for the Ponce de Leon smart corridor (all districts). These corridors and other smart districts cyberinfrastructure can be seen in the Coral Gables Smart City Technology Infrastructure Interactive Map.
• Development Services Center Groundbreaking Ceremony: In March, the City broke ground on the remodeling of the Development Services Center at 427 Biltmore Way. Once completed, this building will serve as a onestop-shop for Building, Planning and Zoning, Code Enforcement, and the Board of Architects. State-of-the-art technology will greatly enhance the customer experience for residents and business owners. New electronic systems such as EnerGov and Laserfiche will facilitate a paperless workflow process, online permit management, and electronic plan review creating a more transparent and convenient process for customers.
• Groundbreaking Ceremony of the ParkSmart-certified new Minorca/PG7 Parking Garage facility, which will feature smart parking technologies and parking guidance cyber-physical systems.
• Completed the OpenGov/Cartegraph Asset Management enterprise system rollout for Landscaping, Community Recreation, and Public Works Utilities
• Working with Development Services and Public Works, CGIT completed the implementation and go-live of the City’s new Land Management, e-Permitting / Electronic Plan Review enterprise system first phase. This new system provides a comprehensive civic services solution for planning, permitting, licensing, asset management and citizen requests, with a platform that uses GIS to automate and connect critical processes, integrate city functions, streamline workflows, improve communication, and increase productivity from desk to field. Also, completed the implementation of the Gridics CodeHub and ZoneIQ Planning and Zoning GIS 3D platforms
• New Core Financial and HR Enterprise System Implementation Started: Our CGIT team working with various City departments (Finance, HR, Executive Steering Team, Working Groups), started the implementation of the City’s new Core Financial and HR Enterprise System (Infor CloudSuite). This advanced system will implement an efficient and horizontally integrated government enterprise system (Enterprise Business Capabilities, EBC), to complete in 2022 the transition to paperless processes and digital efficiencies citywide, integrating with several other enterprise systems that were recently implemented in key areas such as infrastructure services, community recreation, document management, permitting and land management. The key components of the new enterprise system revolve around Core Financials, Procurement, HR, Payroll, and Asset Management.
• Implemented AIDA, the new Artificial Intelligence Digital Assistant for the Coral Gables Smart City Hub Public Platform: As one of the 17 public agencies selected to participate in the inaugural STIR Labs program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), CGIT collaborated with researchers at West Virginia University, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Stanford in the development of an Artificial Intelligence Digital Assistant (AIDA) to help citizens navigate the Coral Gables Smart City Hub public platform and easily find tools, apps, data, and other resources. City Innovate STIR Labs is a national applied research program funded by the National Science Foundation that connects governments and academic teams to co-develop and apply research that offer solutions to the critical issues that communities face utilizing a Challenge-Based Approach. The AIDA system is currently in pilot/prototype Beta test mode in the Coral Gables smart city hub public platform.
• Transit/Transportation Platforms Integration between Coral Gables, Miami-Dade County, and Google Maps: Coral Gables I.T. and Parking departments worked together with Miami-Dade County’s department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW) and industry transportation technology partners integrating their public transportation systems. Coral Gables is the first city in Miami-Dade County to integrate with the county’s transit system, which allows residents and visitors in Coral Gables and the entire County to access real-time Coral Gables trolley routes, vehicle location, stops, connections and ETA information from County, City and industry apps such as Google Maps and MapQuest when planning their commutes.
• Developed several homegrown systems and applications, including an award-wining Procurement Evaluation App, a Passport fee sheet application, a Police TSD Dashboard, a Police Video Request App, a Police IMR report automation system, multiple Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications and geospatial digital services, a FEMA FIRM flood hazard display and analysis application, Public Works and Zoning GIS Hubs, EOC Camera Dashboards, and other applications.
• New Cyberinfrastructure Upgrades and Enhancements: CGIT completed multiple enhancements/upgrades to the City’s cyberinfrastructure: i. Worked with the Fire Department implementing the National Fire Operations Reporting System (NFORS) with intelligent platform and real-time analytics; ii. Worked with the HR Department in the implementation and data migration of a new Benefits Management Software system (Bentek); and worked with the Finance department in the implementation and data migration of a new Retirement software system; iii. e-Commerce, cashiering and points of sale upgrades; iv. Improved and enhanced the City’s cybersecurity, network, and telecommunication infrastructure; v. Cloud, datacenter, systems integration, servers, and client computers upgrades; vi. Wi-Fi network expansions; vii. Conducted a Payment Card Industry (PCI) annual compliance program and other network audits; viii. Telephony VoIP network/circuits upgrades; ix. Provisioning of smart lights (CCTV, IoT, public announcements) at multiple street-ends in the Monegro corridor; x. Citywide mobile management and data archiving upgrades; xi. Citywide alarm monitoring central station upgrade; xii. Kerdyk Tennis Center Access control upgrade; xiii. Police Motor’s unit hardware upgrade; xiv. Technology provisioning for new Police Community Office (all technology equipment/wiring, network connectivity and services); xv. Technology provisioning for new Parking Administration Office; xvi. Citywide assessment of process gaps related to the use of printers and paper and implemented several paperless solutions in conjunction with all city departments.
• Working with Economic Development department, implemented the City’s new Business / Community Data Reporting System (GIS Planning ZoomProspector, powered by the Financial Times and Nikkei Conglomerate)
• New Urban Analytics IoT AI Platform: CGIT implemented a new Urban Analytics Artificial Intelligence Platform (Quantela, HQ in Silicon Valley), which replaces our previous Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data dashboards with one of the most advanced technologies of its kind. The new public dashboards of this system are published in the Smart City Hub public platform and are currently showing real-time vehicle and pedestrian traffic data with added data visualization and integration tools and API's, augmented with other automation and analytic capabilities from this robust technology. This platform won the World Economic Forum's 'Technology Pioneers' award in 2019 and CRN’s IoT Innovators Award in 2020. It converges the IoT, ML, AI, process automation, and predictive analytics to shorten the tech cycle between urban infrastructure and decision-making insight.
• New Traffic Studies Leveraging IoT, Computer Vision, AI & ML Technologies: CGIT deployed advanced technology and analytics for a multimodal traffic study at street intersections for PW traffic engineers and the TPO. Our team uses computer vision, AI and ML technologies and IoT sensors, fixed and mobile CCTV cameras and trailers infrastructure to conduct automated detection, classification, analysis, and computation at the edge and in the cloud, training computer vision engines with ML algorithms to improve accuracy of counts.
• Several STEM research and education partnerships and collaboration initiatives with UM, FIU, WVU, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Stanford U, Treehacks, NIST, City Innovate STIR Labs, WBAF, Strata.ai.
• MOU with Strata.AI on Data Science and AI Education and Workforce 4.0 Skills Development Collaboration: City of Coral Gables executed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Strata.AI to collaborate on Industry 4.0 workforce skills development and education on data science and AI. Professionals from the City’s IT department participated in training courses provided by a program director Ph.D. in AI and industry practitioner/researcher. The syllabus of the courses is aligned with today’s industry and smart cities’ needs, with modules focused on data science foundations, ML, deep learning and applied AI, with practical hands-on project presentations by each student at the end of each module. CGIT presented two applied-AI projects on analyzing and developing ML random forest predictive models from real-time traffic data in Coral Gables, and a research on the correlation of digital inclusion and Covid-19 impact factors in NYC boroughs.
• City of Coral Gables Google Partnership: Grow with Google Program: The City recently announced that it is now a Grow with Google partner, and started hosting a series of free workshops, hosted by Google Coach Digisults, that helped small businesses enhance their digital skills and grow their bottom lines.
• CommentSold eCommerce Licenses for Small Businesses: In an effort to help our business community that was negatively impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, the City offered free e-commerce software for retail businesses who need assistance establishing their online presence. A limited number of 1-year licenses from CommentSold AI-powered social media tool were awarded to qualifying Coral Gables retail businesses.
• City of Coral Gables Technology Workshops for Small Businesses: To help businesses become more resilient, adapt to the new normal and transition to a stronger online presence, the City of Coral Gables held a Technology Workshop Series. The free workshops and course material were designed to give businesses the information and skillset needed to improve their selling capability beyond their brick-and-mortar stores, by empowering with the tools and skills needed to expand, diversify, and thrive. The tech workshops were divided into three groups: (1) a digital boot camp with online marketing essentials; (2) an instructional and comprehensive program to add an e-commerce component to the business; and (3) learn how innovative apps can help businesses make sales. The City’s Economic Development department led this initiative with the City’s Innovation & Technology Department and their technology and innovation partners in industry and academia: Google partners, Silicon Valley technology NPOs, University of Miami, Coral Gables business organizations and members of the local business community.
• CGIT worked with the Economic Development department on the U.S. Census The Opportunity Project (TOP) sprint 2021. In collaboration with the Census Open Innovation Lab, the Minority Business Development Agency and technology teams and user advocates from the local business community, our TOP team developed practical solutions to help small businesses in Coral Gables leverage data and technology tools to connect with their customers, develop resilience, improve workforce digital literacy, and thrive in the digital economy.
• Additions to the Coral Gables Smart City Digital Library page: Smart City Infrastructure GIS Map, a smart city frameworks architecture, an innovation poster with AR, technology presentation slideshows, media resources. Additions to the Smart City Hub platform: AIDA AI Digital Assistant bot; Magical Park and Actionbound AR Apps; SaferWatch Police App; Gridics Codehub & ZoneIQ 3D Zoning Code, Zoning Map, Parcel Check; Lobbyist Registration Portal; Urban Analytics IoT AI Dashboards; New GIS Hubs, Maps, Storyboards and Apps; Broadband and Digital Equity GIS Dashboards; New GIS Open Datasets; Energy Resources Insights Dashboards.
Projects Executed in 2020:
• New Fire Station 2, Trolley Depot Building, and 911 Backup PSAP: The City held a ribbon-cutting and hose uncoupling ceremony to celebrate the total renovation of Fire Station 2 and a new Trolley Depot. The fire station's state-of-the art technology and training facilities will ensure that our firefighters are ready to provide the best of services to our residents as well as a trolley depot to more efficiently serve the more than 1.25 million passengers that use the system every year. The Fire Station houses four new bays for fire vehicles, three classrooms- which include a state-of-the art medical simulation lab, a high-fidelity Incident Command and Fire Training area, and a new training tower. The new Trolley Depot is now located within the City and only a short distance away from our routes. The City’s new backup 911 system is housed at the trolley building. New and advanced technology infrastructure was provisioned by our team at these new/renovated facilities, including fiber optics network, network and telecommunications redundancy/resilience, new high-speed smart network electronics, new 911 backup PSAP system, consoles and computer stations, Wi-Fi network, energy resilience systems, IP telephony and TV systems, security systems, and other cyberinfrastructure.
• New Primary Datacenter / Network Headquarter and other Technology infrastructure for new buildings: The City’s new primary Datacenter / Network Headquarter and other technology infrastructure for new buildings is being completed at the new Public Safety Building, Trolley building and Fire Station 2. That includes all building technology and communications infrastructure and services, new fiber corridors, building automation systems, structural health monitoring (SHM) IoT sensors, new 911 PSAP and backup PSAP equipment, new IT datacenter HQ (network core and distribution), new Emergency Operations Center (EOC) equipment and Community Intelligence Center (CIC) rebuilt technology infrastructure, and new 911 Communications equipment stations, among other technologies scheduled for completion in November 2020.
• Supported citywide technology needs during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, including: deployed more than 200 additional computers and mobile devices for telework and remote access; expanded the network capacity and cloud computing capabilities to support enterprise telework services; enabled additional virtual workspaces for projects and collaboration; enhanced mobile access to applications, documents; facilitated the implementation of virtual commission meetings; leveraged the functionalities of scalable, flexible and secure cloud-based platforms and enterprise systems to maintain operational capacity and business continuity; configured cashier computers to accept payment remotely; collaborated with the economic development department and partnering organizations providing digital resources and assistance to businesses in the city; developed hyperlocal data hubs and data portals for first responders, emergency managers, and Covid-19 testing registration and site operations; participated with UM, FIU, MDBC, NIST GCTC, Tech-CARES, local municipalities and other organizations in Covid-19 technology task forces sharing resources, case studies, lessons learned and insight; collaborated with several organizations in government, industry, academia to enhance data visualization and analytics for emergency operations.
• Designed, engineered, managed, and deployed network infrastructure and telecommunications for several construction projects, including: new Public Safety Building, new IT Primary Datacenter / Network HQ, Fire Station 2 renovation and new Trolley depot, 911 PSAP upgrade, Backup 911 PSAP upgrade and relocation, Parking Garages, Parks, and SCADA telemetry system upgrade. Provisioned fiber optics corridors, datacenters, low voltage wiring, computer networks, AV systems, sensors/actuators, cyber/physical-security systems, new equipment, dispatch consoles, equipment moves; and other smart building infrastructure. Upgraded the City’s core and distribution network with faster/smarter/safer, more resilient backend cyberinfrastructure and electronics as part of the reengineering of the City’s IT 1ry Datacenter / Network HQ.
• Working with Development Services, completed the assessment and define phases of the City’s new Land Management, e-Permitting and Electronic Plan Review enterprise system project and started configuration and testing phases.
• Developed several homegrown systems and applications: a Lobbyist Registration System and a Commission Meeting Speaker Registration System for the City Clerk’s Office, a Special Taxing District payment portal for Finance, GIS hubs for Development Services and Public Works; Covid-19 data portals for first responders, emergency managers and Covid testing site registration; multiple GIS apps for various departments, Census 2020, Right-of-way, and other applications. Implemented several applications and electronic processes: i. DocuSign contract and HR electronic/paperless processes; ii. Landscaping division and Community Recreation department asset management system implementation; iii. Historical Resources & Cultural Arts department new software platform to manage cultural grant applications; iv. Working with the Fire department, completed
implementation of the new Fire Record Management and Emergency Management System, an interface to the CAD system, and a new Fire Hydrant system module; v. Citywide roll out of multiple digital collaboration tools.
• Several cyberinfrastructure upgrades completed: i. e-Commerce, cashiering and points of sale upgrades; ii. Enhanced the City’s cybersecurity, network and telecommunication infrastructure; iii. Cloud, datacenter, systems integration, servers and client computers upgrades; iv. Wi-Fi networks, including Biltmore Tennis Center, Museum block, City buildings and other sites; v. Conducted a Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance program and other network audits; vi. FirstNet implementation for the Police mobile fleet; vii. Waterway CCTV cameras; Smart CCTV lights at 8th Street and Monegro St.; and Geofence site at Granada & 8th Street; viii. Biometrics and virtual appliances; ix. SIP trunking telephony network upgrade; x. new encoders for CGTV; xi. emergency poles at Parking Garage 6 upgraded with video intercom units for 911 operator alerts; xii. e911 PSAP and voice recorder system upgrade; VoIP system integrated with the County
• Finalized the installations of 50 new smart lighting controllers on LED light poles on Miracle Mile in Downtown Coral Gables. These new controllers provide intelligent ON/OFF switching, dimming control, GPS, highly accurate power metering, analog and digital sensor inputs and constant status and health monitoring of the City's lighting fixtures. They also allow City staff to manage the lights either individually or as a group and apply business intelligence rules for energy and cost efficiencies, through a centralized management system that also runs reports on energy consumption, LED burn hours, and generate automatic alerts.
• Finalized installation of more than 30 new Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in Downtown Coral Gables These new sensors report vehicle and pedestrian traffic data in real time from several locations and in multiple directions. The new IoT traffic sensor dashboards are available to the public on the Smart City Hub platform. CGIT also Implemented a new IoT platform, smart parking sensors, and energy consumption dashboard.
• City of Coral Gables was selected as one of the 17 public agencies to be part of the inaugural STIR Labs program funded by NSF. This is a ground-breaking program transforming government-academic collaboration. Our CGIT team worked closely with prestigious academic institutions tackling research needs to address community issues surrounding AI-empowered decisions/solutions, transportation, emergency management, economic recovery, urban planning, resilience, and sustainability.
• Drone Delivery Test for Emergency Operations: Our CGIT team tested the capability of delivering small load/cargo supplies via drone to an area (e.g.: during emergency management operations, hurricane rescuerecon at a remote or inaccessible area, etc.), with radio control and using a small parachute for the cargo delivery. This drone technology also leverages a new satellite communication technology developed in Silicon Valley, that features a small form-factor dish made of a lightweight sturdy engineered material that can be disassembled/reassembled and stored in a small suitcase, and it's powered by origami-type solar panels. Our CGIT team use drones with live video broadcasting (via cellular or satellite communications) and with autonomous routes to support multiple needs for public safety operations, public services and infrastructure, hurricane rescue-recon, outdoor Covid-19 testing sites operations, building rooftop water damage assessment, tower/antennae inspections, GIS/aerial LiDAR photography, video analytics, and other uses.
• Sept 2020 – Coral Gables smart city combined use case of Drones, IoT, and A.I. on a public safety scenario: The City's IT Department assisted the Incident Command Post in real time during a public event, by providing live drone aerial video multicasting via cellular and satellite backup communications, with automated route navigation, and assisted by IoT traffic and behavioral sensor data analytics -transmitting live directly to the ICP situation room. Post-event, our CGIT team used a methodology for area analytics and count verification in an open urban system. The CGIT methodology in this new study employed IoT data from traffic optical sensors and behavioral traffic RF sensors, and object detection and classification metadata produced by an A.I. algorithm on drone footage. The mathematical verification of the telemetry source correlation used 1. Jacobs Method; 2. Computer vision AI analytics on drone footage; 3. IoT traffic data analysis from the smart city hub CPS platform (optical sensor + edge analytics + cloud analytics); 4. RF sensor behavioral data analytics from the smart Wi-Fi mesh network management system; 5. Correlation Analysis: applying the calculated behavioral ratio to the IoT foot traffic data, which produced a result verification accuracy of 96% correlating three independent CPS telemetry sources -better than expected. Results from this case study were shared with academic research partners for further analysis and peer review.
• New Coral Gables Smart City Brochure with Augmented Reality (AR): The City of Coral Gables IT Department new Augmented Reality (AR) brochure on smart city initiatives was launched at CES 2020. Using an AR app, the readers can watch a video virtually embedded on the physical brochure.
• City of Coral Gables Business Technology Webinar: The City’s Innovation & Technology and Economic Development departments organized and held a Business Technology Webinar with experts from academia, industry, government and nonprofits, to help Coral Gables small/medium businesses leverage technology and the digital economy to connect with their customers and suppliers during these challenging times.
• Data and technology collaboration MOUs between Miami-Dade County, City of Coral Gables, City of Miami: City of Coral Gables and Miami-Dade County collectively with City of Miami executed a Memorandum of Understanding to engage and participate in a Utility Coordination GIS viewer for the purpose of sharing information in support of coordinating utility projects in order to minimize construction impacts on residents across Miami-Dade County. This MOU is part of a smart region data collaboration initiative between City of Coral Gables, Miami-Dade County and City of Miami, with participation of industry and nonprofit partners (DataGovs, Microsoft Philanthropies, ESRI Citizen Hub, GitHub, and Code for South Florida) to connect, interoperate and share real-time data and insight about traffic/mobility/transportation/MOT, utilities, CIP projects, right of way, smart city sensors, and other civic data. The goal of this data collaboration is to improve communication, efficiencies and interoperability between our municipalities through a centralized geospatial data hub and GIS apps that can be used by municipal employees from Public Works, Planning, Building, Zoning, Public Safety, IT and other areas of our three organizations.
• Tour of University of Miami Supercomputers with UM IDSC and City Staff: A team from the City along with representatives from the University of Miami recently toured the Network Access Point of the Americas, where the University of Miami's Supercomputer and the City’s secondary network headquarter are housed. The NAP connects Coral Gables to the rest of the world via fiber optics. UM's Triton supercomputer is an incredible piece of machinery that can analyze big data at very high speeds. This helps us stay informed on ways we can improve the quality of life for both the residents and business community. Coral Gables was one of the first municipalities in the state to have collocated its network systems at the NAP. Our City is collaborating with UM researchers to leverage UM’s supercomputer in the analysis of all of the City’s complex smart city data.
Projects Executed in 2019:
• New Smart Lighting Systems in Downtown Coral Gables: CGIT finalized the installations of 50 new smart lighting controllers on LED light poles on Miracle Mile in Downtown Coral Gables. These new controllers provide intelligent ON/OFF switching, dimming control, GPS, highly accurate power metering, analog and digital sensor inputs and constant status and health monitoring of the City's lighting fixtures. They also allow City staff to manage the lights either individually or as a group and apply business intelligence rules for energy and cost efficiencies, through a centralized management system that also runs reports on energy consumption, LED burn hours, and generate automatic alerts when there are issues affecting the light fixtures. Each pole was labelled and geolocated in the system with GPS coordinates to be easily identifiable and located for maintenance and troubleshooting purposes.
• Smart City Kiosks launched in Downtown Gables: The four new smart city kiosks with the interactive IKE (Interactive Kiosk Experience) platform make it easier for our residents and visitors to navigate Downtown Coral Gables, find things to do and places to shop and eat. The kiosks, located along Miracle Mile and Giralda Plaza, also provide access to city services, city mobile apps, the smart city hub public platform, air quality data and real-time transit information. Among its fun features are cameras for selfies and interactive games.
• New IoT Sensors in Downtown Coral Gables: The City finalized the installation of more than 30 new Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in Downtown Coral Gables. These new sensors report vehicle and pedestrian traffic data in real time from several locations and in multiple directions, including: Miracle Mile (all 4 blocks), Miracle Mile intersections at LeJeune Rd, Salzedo St, Ponce de Leon Blvd, Galiano St, and Douglas Rd; Giralda Ave & Galiano St; Merrick Way & Aragon Ave. Also, new environmental sensors in Miracle Mile/Le Jeune Rd/Douglas Rd report air quality data including carbon emissions (CO2, CO/CO2) and air pollutants (PPM, VOC). Other IoT sensors in Downtown, currently in integration phase, are also measuring noise dBs and detecting occupied/available street parking spaces. The new IoT traffic sensors dashboards are available to the public on the Coral Gables smart city hub platform at www.coralgables.com/smartcity under the Internet of Things section of the menu.
• Office 365 cloud migration and Office 365 training completed for all City departments.
• Kickoff Meeting of the Smart Region Data Govs Partnership: Technology leaders of Miami-Dade County, City of Miami, City of Coral Gables, and Microsoft Civic Innovation met at the City of Coral Gables IT Department to kick off a new smart region DataGovs collaborative initiative. The purpose of this collaboration is to improve municipal services and government efficiency; foster intergovernmental collaboration, innovation and strategic partnerships; and, advance smart cities collaboration in the Miami-Dade County region and South Florida region in general. Data Govs is a public-private collaborative network in South Florida that brings together City and County employees, inspiring them by sharing best practices of data/tech projects in a positively supportive environment.
• The City joined the Waze’s Connected Citizens Program (CCP), a data-sharing partnership with Waze. Designed as a free, two-way data share of publicly available traffic information, the CCP promotes greater efficiency, deeper insights and safer roads for citizens of Coral Gables along with more than 850 other partners around the world. The CCP provides an unprecedented look at real-time road activity, empowering partners to harness real-time driver insights to improve congestion and make better informed planning decisions. Waze provides partners with real-time, anonymous, Waze-generated incident and slow-down information directly from the source: drivers themselves. In exchange, the City provides real-time government-reported construction, speed zones, turn restrictions, crash and road closure data to Waze to return one of the most succinct, thorough overviews of current road conditions. Leveraging this partnership, the I.T. department developed a new homegrown Situational Awareness dashboard that contains the new Coral Gables Waze traffic data dashboard.
• Coral Gables Situational Awareness Dashboard: CGIT launched the Coral Gables Waze Data Dashboard, a homegrown traffic data analysis and GIS application that leverages the data sharing partnership the City started with Waze as part of the Connected Citizens Program (CCP). The new dashboard visualizes live data and statistics from the Waze community/crowdsourcing platform and provides valuable and actionable information for public safety staff, first responders, city fleet, field inspectors, traffic engineers, urban planners, researchers, businesses, and citizens. The CGIT team continued working on adding more historical data analysis and predictive trend analytics to this application. It can be accessed in the Smart City Hub public platform
• Working with the Fire Department, completed the implementation of the new Fire Scheduling System (Kronos TeleStaff). This system provides a better way to manage public safety schedules and communications with
fairer and more accurate personnel scheduling; automatic, rules-based assignment of overtime; integrated communication; and better emergency response. Also, working with the Police Department and Finance, completed the implementation of the Police Off-Duty system (Jobs4Blue) electronic process and data integration, which improves the Police Off-Duty scheduling and administrative process.
• Citywide Cyberinfrastructure Service Upgrades: Several upgrades to the City’s cyberinfrastructure services completed: i. Wi-Fi networks, including public Wi-Fi locations*; ii. New Software-defined networks (SDN) and hyper-converged systems (HCIS) servers, storage and disaster recovery; iii. Improved and enhanced the City’s cybersecurity, network and telecommunication infrastructure; iv. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enterprise upgrade; v. Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance program. *The public Wi-Fi project provides complementary wireless Internet access to citizens and visitors at specific city facilities and local venues such as parks, tennis centers, Coral Gables Museum, Youth Center, Miracle Mile, Giralda Plaza and other areas of the city. This network also allows foreign travelers and visitors with Wi-Fi devices and no data coverage to access online services such as special events, restaurants, parking, trolley, shopping, public safety alerts and online payments. Additionally, it enhances network connectivity for city employees and smart systems. Completed Public Wi-Fi Locations: Downtown Gables (Miracle Mile, Giralda Plaza, Andalusia), City Hall, Planning & Zoning, Passport Office, Youth Center, Venetian Pool, Adult Activity Center, Public Safety Building, Parking Office, Facilities, Economic Development, Riviera Park, Salvador Tennis Center, Balboa Plaza, Ingraham Park, Merrick Park, Cartagena Circle, Museum, Art Cinema, Phillips Park, Fire Station 2, Biltmore Tennis Center.
• New Coral Gables Public Sentiment AI Analytics Platform: Working with the Public Affairs Manager and the City’s leadership, our CGIT team launched a new data analytics platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to generate actionable analytics about citizen engagement, public sentiment, marketing, public safety, incidents/anomalies, and important City topics to improve customer service, communications, situational awareness and response.
• Authored and submitted papers and articles to professional publications, including a smart city article for the Winter 2019 ArcNews GIS publication, an electrical engineering energy resilience research paper coauthored with researchers from the University of Miami (UM), and a data science research paper with UM researchers.
• Asset Management System Expansion and LiDAR Digital Twin - Working with Public Works in their Right-ofWay Inventory project, our CGIT team supported with technical analysis and acquiring licenses and professional services to conduct a city-wide inventory of right-of-way assets using advanced LiDAR and CycloMedia 360 technology. Our team also started the expansion of the City’s Asset Management enterprise system to include several additional modules for Right of Way, Waterways, Trees, Landscaping, Sanitation, and other functions on top of the Facility Management module implemented in 2016.
• New Smart City Data Collaboration with University of Miami: City of Coral Gables IT Department (CGIT) and UM Center for Computational Science (UM-CCS) stared a new smart cities collaboration to use UM's new Triton supercomputer to analyze big data from our City (horizontally integrated enterprise systems data, crowdsourced data, IoT/CPS data, and external open data sources) to study predictive models using multivariate and covariance analytics. The goal is to obtain insightful correlation information that will help us derive new data-driven decision models to improve operational efficiencies and effectiveness, and leverage business intelligence, computational neuroscience research and AI for civic applications and actionable analytics.
• City of Coral Gables and University of Miami “Design your Coral Gables” Smart City Solutions Competition: The City of Coral Gables and the UM partnered organizing and launching the “Design Your Coral Gables” Smart City Solutions Competition, which invites participants to bring their ideas to life by prototyping technology solutions on one of five transportation and traffic challenges. The teams presented smart city technology prototypes to help City of Coral Gables address some of the top traffic and transportation challenges.
• City of Coral Gables Supported Florida International University Cyberinfrastructure NSF Project Proposal: CGIT submitted a letter of support to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the FIU project proposal “Advanced Cyber Infrastructure Training in Policy Informatics”. In July 2019, the NSF awarded a $1M grant for this project, which will benefit City of Coral Gables and other municipalities in the South Florida region with access to an interdisciplinary program for Cyberinfrastructure training to policy scientists, which includes engineers and social scientists (geographers, planners, public administrators, criminologists, and others.)
• New Citizen Engagement Hub: Coral Gables’ new Citizen Engagement Hub was launched by the Communications department and CGIT for outreach and listening efforts to shape the future of our community. Residents can find upcoming events, initiatives, and opportunities to share their input on key topics.
Projects Executed in 2018:
• New Coral Gables Smart City Hub Public Platform: This homegrown collaboration and open data platform aggregates many interconnected and interoperable elements that include a Data Marketplace, an Application Store, Transparency Portals, Citizen Engagement tools, Enterprise Systems and eGov City Services, Internet of Things sensor data and dashboards, Crime Intelligence; Data Platforms, GIS applications and open data, APIs and developer tools, and many more features and functionalities that foster transparency, value creation; open data and analytics; actionable information, efficiencies; citizen engagement, mobility, accessibility; crowdsourcing; inclusion, and collaboration: www.coralgables.com/smartcityhub.
• Free Wi-Fi Available at Miracle Mile, Giralda Plaza, and other Locations: Pedestrians on Miracle Mile and Giralda Plaza can now connect to the City’s public Wi-Fi network to access the internet, free of charge. Free Wi-Fi is also available at City Hall, Youth Center, Venetian Pool, Salvadore Tennis Center, Riviera Park, Adult Activity Center, Passport Office, Public Safety Building, 427 Biltmore Way and 72nd Avenue, and Kerdyk Park.
• Beginning Phase IV of the CCTV/ALPR Project: In this phase, the City rolled out smart lights with CCTV cameras and sensors at 8th Street, Granada, Craft / Douglas Road area, LPR at Bird Road & Red Road, CCTV cameras at waterways and parks, CCTV/ALPR/Speed trailers, software integrations and related network upgrades.
• Kick-off Sessions of the New e-Permitting, Land Management & Licensing Enterprise System: The City started the implementation of the new electronic permitting enterprise system. This system provides a comprehensive civic services solution for planning, permitting, and licensing to asset management and citizen requests, with a platform that uses GIS to automate and connect critical processes, horizontally integrate city functions, streamline workflows, improve communication, and increase productivity from desk to field. Electronic Plan Review Stations: As part of the system implementation, several electronic plan review stations were installed in different City departments, with large format digital tables and engineering software to allow concurrent paperless plan review, collaboration, workflow efficiency and digital annotation with markup tools.
• Coral Gables Traffix App: This app designed by the IT Department enhances citizen engagement and public safety, by reporting chronic traffic issues within our city boundaries. Users can take photos and report recurring traffic issues such as blocking the box, speeding, illegal parking, pedestrian issues, running a red light/stop sign.
• New Internet of Things (IoT) Pedestrian Counter Sensors on Giralda Plaza and Miracle Mile, and new IoT platform: These new sensors started providing valuable data for city planners, public safety, event coordinators, businesses, researchers and public in general, with real-time actionable data and analytics. The new public IoT portal was launched on the City’s website and integrated into the smart city hub.
• Working with the Finance Department, implemented a new Transparency Portal, transforming complex financial information into simple-to-understand charts that answer common questions about tax dollars spending. It allows users to access data in many ways using filters and drill down options.
• Launched a new City Website and CMS with improved functionalities, design, and mobile responsiveness.
• Energy and Sustainability Collaboration Program with Miami-Dade College - The City started a collaboration program with MDC for mentorships and development support of energy efficiency and sustainability plans.
• New Mobile App – Beta Launch and Go-Live: The official City of Coral Gables mobile app has also been revamped with a fresh, new look. The new version has been redesigned to make it easier to use, more responsive, and enhanced with better access to other City services.
• Completed multiple Cyberinfrastructure Upgrades: i. Voice/data/video collaboration platform; ii. Enterprise Call Reporting System; iii. Phone number and scalable/accessible IVR service for emergencies (305-800-NEWS); iv. Increased the transport bandwidth to 10 Gbps on network nodes; v. New devices for Police Motor’s units; vi. Improvements for biometric authentication; vii. Bandwidth/capacity expansion at the NAP colocation site; viii. CGTV Technology & Accessibility upgrades: AV equipment, closed captions, web and TTY.
Projects Executed in 2017:
• VoIP telephony upgrades citywide and decommissioning of legacy PBX phone switches
• New Internet of Things (IoT) Portal Went Live: It was launched on the City’s website to start showing IoT pedestrian eco-counter sensors implemented on Giralda Plaza. The data and analytics from these pedestrian counters is visible and accessible to the public via the City’s new smart city IoT platform. This sensor data is very useful to City departments, businesses, researchers, academia, and the public in general. An open data platform with visibility and analytics from live IoT sensors is one of the milestones in our smart city roadmap.
CGIT enhanced the City’s smart city platforms with data from more IoT sensors, including smart lights and sensors in Miracle Mile (vehicle/bikes/pedestrian traffic, parking spaces, environmental, air quality, acoustic sensors). These smart city systems continued adding value and insight to City strategies in many key areas (technology, economic development, public safety, traffic/transportation, sustainability, citizen engagement.)
• Launch of the New Parks & Recreation Enterprise System: The new PlayGables platform was designed specifically for municipal and county government recreation and parks departments, golf courses, park districts, and park maintenance operations. The applications contain complete financial accounting and pointof-sale capabilities, and integration with a full range of point-of-sale hardware products and complementary software products. Provides staff and customers with easy and convenient 24/7 Internet access to the application for self-service inquiries and transaction processing, such as online registrations, online membership renewals, online facility registrations, and other Parks and Recreations services.
• New IoT Pedestrian Counter Sensors on Giralda Plaza: New IoT Pedestrian Counter sensors went live on Giralda Plaza before its opening. They started providing valuable data for city planners, public safety, event coordinators, businesses, researchers and public in general, with real-time actionable data and analytics.
• Beginning Phase III of the CCTV/ALPR Project: In this phase, the City is implementing 6 smart lights with CCTV cameras and sensors at 8th Street and Craft Neighborhood / Douglas Road proximity area, plus 8 CCTV cameras at Waterways and Parks, plus 4 CCTV/ALPR/Speed trailers.
• Launch of Parking Permit Online Renewal System: The City now offers the service to renew parking permits online. Customers can manage their account information by editing name, address, phone number and adding vehicle information and assigning a vehicle(s) to each permit before proceeding to checkout.
• New Trolley App went Live: The City launched its new Trolley Mobile App which provides real-time tracking of the city trolleys on an interactive map with trolley routes and stops, providing value and convenience for Coral Gables residents, workers, and visitors. This app was integrated with the City’s mobile app.
• Launch of FreeBee Service and Mobile App: Freebee Offers Free Rides in Downtown Coral Gables. Citizens can get a quick drive around Downtown Coral Gables thanks to a new partnership between the City of Coral Gables and Freebee, a green transportation service that will offer free door-to-door rides around your favorite destinations. Friendly drivers in sleek electric vehicles will be on the street from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week. Users request this service on their smart phone through the Ride Freebee app.
• Launch of In-telligent Mobile App: The City partnered with In-Telligent to provide real-time community alerts to inform citizens and keep them safe in times of emergencies. Downloading the free In-telligent app users get life safety alerts on their mobile device, informing immediately of what's going on around them.
Projects Executed in 2016:
• Completion Phase I of the CCTV/ALPR Project: In this phase, the City implemented a Crime Intelligence Center (CIC) with video walls, workstations and public safety applications, a CrimeView crime data analysis system, geospatial data analysis systems, a wireless backbone, 24 License Plate Readers and 3 CCTV cameras at 12 locations, including sites at the City’s geofence and public safety sensitive areas such as: US-1, Riviera, Country Club Prado at Red Rd. & 8th Street, Granada & Bird Rd., Douglas & Coral Way, Coral Way & Red Rd., Ingraham/Cocoplum Park, and Old Cutler Rd.; and 1 CCTV portable trailer “Sky Eye” unit. CCTV Cameras are placed in strategically selected locations of high traffic and pedestrian areas to provide a geofence around the City. The CIC is a new state-of-the art command center in Police headquarters that receives video feeds from all City-owned cameras and private cameras where owners have given permission for their use. License Plate Readers are located at key intersections throughout Coral Gables to identify persons or vehicles whose license plates are connected to criminal activity or infractions. New Crime Analysis Technology: Introduction of Crime View software technology to enhance situational awareness and crime analysis capabilities.
• Beginning Phase II of the CCTV/ALPR Project: In this phase, the City implemented 26 CCTV cameras in Downtown Streetscape area (Miracle Mile, City Hall, Giralda Plaza, Douglas and Coral Way), Old Cutler Road and Journey’s End/Matheson Hammock entrance, and Parking Garages 2 and 6. Also, implemented BriefCam at the Crime Intelligence Center, and 15 emergency call boxes at street public areas and garages in Downtown.
• New Public Records Request System: CGIT implemented the system with City Clerk’s & City Attorney’s Offices
• New Fiber Corridors: CGIT completed two new underground fiber corridors along Miracle Mile and Giralda Plaza, to provide high-speed connectivity and network resiliency for critical city services, public Wi-Fi, public safety systems and smart city infrastructure.
Long
Term
Visionary Projects and Strategic Goals:
Overall vision: Achieve Smart City Holistic KPI milestones in sustainability, resilience, workability, and livability; high efficiencies in transportation, public safety, energy/water/environmental resources, technology, finance, economic development, digital literacy, and citizen services. Improvements in customer service and quality of life metrics and benchmarks. Productive revenue generating models from smart city tech infrastructure/services
- Broadband Collaboration and Research Triangle:
• Connecting Coral Gables smart districts with the Underline/Metrorail corridor to the South and the Flagler corridor to the North. Leveraging Coral Gables smart districts, regional EOC and CIC technology and infrastructure to foster/ignite regional smart city technology and infrastructure adoption and quality-of-life impact. Provide last-mile connectivity for other N-S and E-W broadband and technology/innovation corridors.
• Regional Data Sharing and Research Collaboration. Regional STEM projects. Inter-agency mutual network redundancy, hurricane/disaster recovery and resilience.
• Quality-of-life Collaboration Projects (mobility, safety, education, healthcare, jobs, recreation, community programs, sustainability and environmental conservation, resilience, digital inclusion…)
• Innovation and Tech Training Centers. Job creation, Upskilling. Attracting high-tech employers. Tech-driven Economic Zones. Coral Gables Technopark Community High-tech smart cities centers of excellence.
- Gables TechTank Public-Private Partnership Multiyear Program Continuity:
Tech jobs remain in high demand across all industry sectors, which presents challenges. Open jobs outweigh the number of qualified applicants to fill them. Through the Gables TechTank initiative, the City along with its partners, will continue working to bridge the gap by facilitating the upskilling of local professionals through training programs. Our goal is to provide reliable, sustainable sources of technical talent, data, services, and innovative solutions to organizations located within the City of Coral Gables. Of the tech companies that responded to the City’s technical talent needs survey, almost 50% rated Cybersecurity, Data Science, AI & Machine Learning, and Full-Stack Development as essential skills. The City and its STEM partners will continue collaborating over the next years to understand the tech needs of the business community, create syllabi to address the technical skills needed of the labor force, provide internships and training with certificates and credentials, and connect talent with career opportunities.
- Coral Gables Smart City Research Laboratory and Tech-Park:
• Concept/Idea: The Coral Gables Tech-Park: a community innovation, R&D, training, and incubator/accelerator multi-purpose technological center that will provide high-tech skills to young students and entrepreneurs in our community, connect local tech talent with projects and job opportunities in the local industry in Coral Gables, provide affordable tech solutions and work/office/lab space to local business needs, and scale up the Coral Gables smart districts projects. This P3 initiative will be accomplished with our partners in academia, tech industry, local businesses, and NPOs, leveraging CGIT’s Smart City Research Lab multi-year accomplishments.
• Strategic Alignment: This idea is strategically aligned with: Coral Gables strategic management goals; Smart City journey initiatives for Innovation, Sustainability and Quality of Life; City mission of excellent municipal services, vision of World-Class City and Community of Excellence with active partnership between government, academia, industry, and non-profit organizations. This concept also aligns with our city's award-winning smart districts projects and with our regional impact vision of a "research triangle" which will connect our innovation corridors with the Underline to the South and with the Flagler corridor to the North, to help scale our City's smart infrastructure to other areas of the County (including underserved communities) for regional collaboration, resiliency, public safety, digital inclusion, tech business attraction and economic growth.
• Impact, Benefits and KPIs: City revenue generation opportunities; Upskilling of the local workforce; Accelerating innovation in the local business ecosystem; Opportunities for students and residents to learn/build technological skills necessary to succeed in today’s economy and apply them hands-on in local projects for businesses and organizations; Talent pool and skilled workers supply for local businesses and organizations in Coral Gables; Opportunities for local inventors, innovators, tech startups and entrepreneurs to showcase and pitch their creations and concepts to the local ecosystem; a center for community innovation that will also attract talent, investment, tech companies and jobs to our city. KPIs, success metrics: projects completed, tech jobs/internships created, revenue generated, lab experiments done, students trained, events held, visitors/year, companies hosted.
• Organization Charter and Governance: Potential organization options include: P3 joint venture or consortium, nonprofit organization (e.g.: 501-c), pilot MVP/POC, shared property ownership, revenue sharing, financial institution partnerships, and others.
• Funding Sources: Public-Private capital. State Economic Opportunity Grants. P3 Consortium funding. Funding from tech financing organizations. Technology corporations interested in occupying the 4th and 5th floors. Some of the Gables TechTank partnering organizations have existing resources and infrastructure they can contribute to the Center. Potential Federal grants, philanthropic seed money, and City CIP funds, if available.
- Replacement of Telecommunications Tower, Power Generators, Expand Capacity, Private 5G/CBRS Networks:
• Leverage CGIT tower engineering study completed in 2022/2023 to plan and execute a capital project to replace the existing communication tower and emergency power generator at the Coral Gables Fire Station #3, in collaboration with telecommunication industry partners and leveraging public-private funding capital.
• The tower was originally constructed in 1993 and has had several structural modifications over the years. Today, the tower is at capacity and leaves no flexibility to add additional loads, for either City or carrier tenants. This tower is crucial to the City’s public safety communication network, and it is also important to the carriers as this is the only tower structure in the area that supports commercial carriers’ networks.
• The existing generator that supports the fire station, the City’s public safety radio system, and some of the commercial carriers is also scheduled to be replaced for higher capacity and reliability. The City’s goal is to replace the existing propane emergency power generator with two diesel emergency power generators sized to accommodate all existing electrical systems on-site including FS3, city, and commercial carrier equipment.
• Leverage other city-owned properties with adequate rooftop height and capacity for antennae colocation and revenue generation from carrier tenant services.
• Develop Private 5G/CBRS City wireless networks that can provide connectivity for city services and sensors in remote areas and neighborhoods outside the City’s fiber network corridors (e.g.: coastal and North areas).
- Retrofitting and Integrating all City parking garages to Future-Ready Smart Parking technologies:
• Automated frictionless Parking revenue & guidance/reservation systems with real time parking space counting, wayfinding signage; color-coded guidance lighting; parking signage, revenue control, MaaS/AV integrations
• User interfaces; Enhances Customer Parking Experience; Customers park faster and safer. Maximizes garage parking efficiency; Speeds up parking process. Security Features; Camera-based multi-function sensor system.
• Car finder/locator; Electronic parking kiosks; User Interface software, cloud data platform, mobile apps.
- Coral Gables Structure Health Monitoring (SHM) IoT Systems:
• Abstract: Smart Building IoT strategies and initiatives allow the City of Coral Gables obtain actionable data from cyber-physical systems such as IoT sensors and smart devices to enable governmental civil infrastructures to become sensing platforms that are easier and more practical to deploy and maintain over the lifetime of a building (or any civil structure in general). Smart building sensor data analytics also provides real-time and historical visibility over environmental and occupational impact factors, during normal conditions, over maintenance cycles, and during extreme wind and precipitation conditions. This project focuses on a smart building structural and operational sensing IoT platform being implemented in the New Public Safety Headquarter Building. A high-level analysis of topological design, cost and feasibility was presented in CGIT’s SHM executive report, with design scalability and applicability to various kind of public infrastructure and sensing scenarios (bridges, public facilities, private development, and others.)
• Phase I (Completed): i. Anemometers (wind profile), Rain gauge, Solar radiation, Environmental Multisensory Station. ii. Building Automation System (BAS – in-building humidity, temperature, energy/water consumption and efficiency). iii. Horizontal integration and real-time visualization and analytics (IoT, 3D-GIS/BIM/VDC, digital twin). iv. Cloud integration of environmental multi-sensor stations between multiple city facilities.
• Phase II: i. Servo-velocimeters and Servo-accelerometers (wind-induced vibration and structure frequency and resonance) – PSHQ (control building) and pilot structures. ii. NIST/IEEE/Carnegie-Mellon SHM physics, engineering, and computational models. iii. Infrared thermography (IRT - moisture in the roofing substrate)
• Phase III: i. Stress and Structural integrity optical/OTDR analysis (e.g.: concrete quality, corrosion) – PSHQ (control building) and pilot structures. ii. NIST/IEEE/Carnegie-Mellon SHM physics, engineering, and computational models. iii. Extended research collaboration University of Miami (UM) and Florida International University (FIU) schools of engineering (civil, structural, electrical, electronic, computing) and physics. iv. City of Coral Gables I.T. team and academic research teams (UM, FIU) will collaborate on writing and publishing formal scientific papers with results of Phases I-II-III. v. Will share findings with municipalities and research institutions for peer review and potential applicability in other communities and other civil infrastructure.
- Goals and Benchmarks of the 10-year Sustainability Master Plan:
Support the goals in energy consumption reduction, green/smart energy, green datacenter, 100% achievement of energy efficient and low carbon footprint infrastructure benchmarks: sustainability plan goals.
- Technology Provisioning for Coral Gables Mobility Hub
• The project is still in redesign phase.
• The Coral Gables Mobility Hub addresses the future of Mobility, supporting electric vehicle technologies, micromobility, committing to resilient design, and providing a smart transportation solution for the local community.
• Once the project is redesigned and approved to begin construction, CGIT will work with city departments and contractors to coordinate engineering and provisioning of smart building and smart mobility technologies.
- Coral Gables Distributed Energy Resources, Smart Microgrids, Alternative Energy Sources:
• Overview: During power outages and natural disasters, our proposed Resilient Energy System (RES) will allow critical emergency services to continue without interruption, furthering our ability to save lives and empower our residents. According to federal data, the frequency of power outages in the United States' electrical grid has nearly tripled since 1984. When outages occur, emergency facilities can lose power for extended periods of time, traditional generators can fail, and fuel becomes limited. The City is designing a system that can generate power during electric grid failures which can save lives, money, and produce zero carbon emissions. A RES system can solve this problem by harnessing renewable energy, storing it in batteries, and then distributing and prioritizing power to critical emergency systems through a smart software.
• The Proposed Solution: The City's critical emergency services will become more resilient by integrating a smart Distributed Energy Resources (DER) microgrid which produces and prioritizes power during power outages and natural disasters. Currently, when our utility company's electrical grid fails, the outages can take days to be restored, which can affect critical services such as 911 call centers and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems. Like most cities, Coral Gables relies on backup generators during power outages. Generators have a high probability of failure and require thousands of gallons of fuel that is in short supply and in high demand during hurricanes. For example, during Hurricane Irma, the 911 call center received approximately a 300% increase in emergency calls. Losing power during these times can place lives at risk.
• Design: RES has two components: hardware and software. The hardware harnesses power from solar panels and wind turbines and stores it in the system's batteries. The software then distributes power to critical emergency systems as needed. RES will have an override function and predetermined human-driven procedures in order to manage critical decision-making processes when normal and backup power sources become unavailable. RES will function both proactively (prioritizing loads based on anticipated scenarios) and reactively (prioritizing loads based on real-time scenarios).
• Prototype, Tests and Simulation: Working in collaboration with the University of Miami SimLab, our project team created two simulation models, fast and high-fidelity, to test the functions of RES. The fast simulation model tested whether RES could provide continuous power to the 911 system and IT servers in the case of electrical grid and generator failure. The high-fidelity model tested the behavior of each RES component (i.e. solar panel block, decision model switchboard, Matlab function block. buck converter, DC-AC inverter) and the control algorithms (i.e. power wave modulation blocks, maximum power point tracking algorithm). The RES SOP was designed based on previously executed emergency management procedures. To test our theory, we input Hurricane Irma power failure data to the computer simulation model. The model showed that RES consistently provides backup power to 911 and EOC systems. The accuracy of the fast simulation model is approximately 99.6% compared to the high-fidelity simulation model in terms of power delivery from batteries.
• Other: Solar PV and wind turbine power applications for network energy resiliency at public safety facilities.
Multi-Year Research and Development Collaboration Projects and Initiatives:
R&D Labs:
• Coral Gables Smart City Research Lab
• Gables TechTank STEM Incubator
• Coral Gables GIS & IoT Innovation Lab
• Coral Gables & UM Smart City Business Technology Demo Lab
• Coral Gables & UM 5G, IoT and XR Media Demo Labs
• Coral Gables & UM SimLab Smart Energy Lab, NSF Civic Innovation Challenge and MetroLab Network
• Coral Gables & FIU CEC Cyberinfrastructure and Resilience Data Hub Lab, Internet of Things Lab, NSF Civic Innovation, MetroLab
• City Innovate STIR Labs Coral Gables Challenge
• NIST GCTC Data Supercluster Use Case Proofs Lab
• Coral Gables and Strata.AI Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Training Lab
CGIT R&D Collaboration on STEM Challenges and Proposals:
• US Department of Energy (DOE), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) / Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Real-World Signalized Traffic Corridor Control / Site / Paper: Link - Link
• US Department of Energy (DOE), ARPA-E, PNNL Lab. / Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA): Resilient and Energy-Efficient City-wide Transportation Operations - Transportation Networks / Link
• US Department of Energy (DOE), EERE, PNNL Lab. / Moving Coral Gables Toward a Sustainable FutureTransportation and Energy Analysis.
• City Innovate, STIR Labs, WVU, UC Berkeley, NSF / 2020 STIR Labs Cohort Challenge / CGIT NSF-Funded Research challenge: “Improve accessibility and confidence for smart city hub users” / Link
• NIST GCTC smart city coalition & Silicon Valley municipalities and tech non-profits / First-Adopter, Practitioner / Abstract Title: Collaborative Research: Adaptable Resilience Ecosystem (ARE)
• UM College of Engineering & SimLab, NSF Smart and Connected Communities / Co-PI researcher / Abstract Title: Hurricane Resilient Microgrid Energy System (HERMES): City of Coral Gables.
• UM College of Engineering & SimLab / Provost Research Testbed / “Artificially Intelligent Decision-making for Resilient Smart City Microgrids (AID-GRID)”
• UM College of Engineering & SimLab / Testbed / “Sustainable & Resilient Microgrid Energy Networks in Urban Settings (GENiUS)”
• UM College of Engineering, NSF / Testbed / “NRT: Convergent Graduate Training Program on Climate Engineering and Coastal Resilience”
• UM School of Architecture, Dept. of Civil & Architectural Engineering, NCHRP IDEA Program / Title: Digital Twins for City of Coral Gables Bridges.
• UM School of Architecture, Dept. of Geography & Sustainable Development, NSF Confronting Hazards, Impacts and Risks for a Resilient Planet (CHIRRP) Program / Testbed / Title: Simulating Coastal Adaptation and Local Exposure for Enhanced Resilience (SCALE-R).
• UM SoA Dept. of Geography & Sustainable Development and ASU, NSF / Title: SCC-PG: Co-Designing Smart and Sustainable Communities with Decision-Support Dashboards and Digital Twins.
• UM Department of Civil & Architectural Engineering, NSF / Testbed / “Multi-layer networks for smart city digital twins: predictability, observability, and scalability”
• Missouri University of Science & Technology (MUST), FIU College of Engineering and Computing, NSF / CoPI researcher / Abstract Title: Big Connected Data Enables (BCDE)
• Barry University / “BU Engaged STEM Scholars – Enhancing Student Success for STEM Careers”
• FIU College of Engineering & Computing, NSF / Co-PI researcher / Abstract Title: CIVIC Data Platform for Resilient Futures: Accelerating Data-Driven Science, Policy Making and Community Solutions.
• FIU College of Engineering and Computing, NSF / Team Collaborator, First-Adopter / Funded Project Title: Advanced Cyber Infrastructure Training in Policy Informatics / Link
• FIU Ph.D. dissertation, Dr. Ramon Trias: Democracy and Bureaucracy of Smart Place: Coral Gables, FL and the Role of Aspirational Content in Local Governance / Link
• FIU Institute of Environment and Department of Biological Sciences, NSF / Testbed / “CREST Phase II: Center for Aquatic Chemistry and Environment (CREST-CAChE)”
• FIU Institute of Environment and Department of Biological Sciences, NOAA, UM, SECOORA / First-Adopter, Practitioner / Funded Project Title: Integrated coastal flood observation network for citizen engagement and improved data, modeling and projections / Link
• FIU Institute of Environment and Department of Biological Sciences, NSF / Testbed / “Miami Air and Water Information (MAWI) Project: Examining Environmental Data Use for Decision Making”
• FIU College of Engineering and Computing, FIU Department of Physics, NSF / Team Member / Abstract Title: Cyberinfrastructure for Monitoring Urban Microbiomes (CyberMUM)
• FIU College of Engineering and Computing, NIST / MiamiCyber2Work proposal that seeks to build cybersecurity affinity workforce pathways for FIU students at City of Coral Gables.
• FIU College of Engineering and Computing, NSF / Testbed / “Collaborative Research: Elements: UPaaS: A Digital Twin-Assisted UAS Hardware and Software Platform as a Service”
• FIU College of Engineering and Computing, NSF / Testbed / “Theme 4: NSF AI Institute for Research in Decision Making for Resilient Human-centered Systems (AI-RHS)”
• FIU GIS Center / “Sea Level Rise Impact Assessment Tool -A Web-Based Application for Community Resilience in Coral Gables, Florida” / Link
• FIU Laboratory for Social Science Research, International Hurricane Research Center, NSF / Testbed / “Integrated ML-Based Dynamic Multi-Hazard Hurricane Model: Knowledge Co-Production towards Realtime Socio-Physical Performance Tracking of Coastal Communities.”
• FIU School of Computing and Information Sciences / testbed / “Collaborative Research: PDaSP: Track 3: Towards A Privacy Risk Assessment Testbed in Data Sharing for Smart Cities”
• FIU School of Computing and Information Sciences, NSF / testbed / “CICI: UCSS: Secure Machine Learning Inference in IoT-driven Analytical Scientific Infrastructure”
• FIU Department of Public Policy and Administration, NSF / Team Member / “SAI: Strengthening Infrastructure of N11 Emergency Response Systems”
• Miami-Dade College / Team Member / “Expanding Bandwidth: Training the Next Generation of Skilled Internet of Things Technicians”
• USF Department of Mathematics & Statistics, FIU College of Engineering and Computing, NSF / FirstAdopter, Practitioner / Abstract Title: NRT-HDR-IDEAS: Inspiring Data-Centric Engineers And Scientists (IDEAS) for Leading Human-centered Smart Cities.
• Northeastern University, Civic A.I. Lab, NSF / Testbed / “Collaborative Research: HCC: Medium: Crowd Work Cooperatives: Designing for Better Worker Experiences and Better Work Products”
CGIT R&D Collaboration on Standards and Blueprints:
• ISO/IEC/IEEE 23026. International Standard 23026 for Systems and software engineering - Engineering and management of websites for systems, software, and services information / Workgroup Lead / Links: ISO / IEC / IEEE
• IEEE 1680.4. International Standard for Environmental Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility Assessment of Servers / Workgroup Member / Link
• IEEE P2784. Guide for the Technology and Process Framework for Planning a Smart City / Workgroup Member / Link
• IEEE The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Standards Committee (AI/SC)
• NIST: Global Community Technology Challenge (GCTC) Strategic Plan 2024-2026. Link
• NIST and GMU: Global Community Technology Challenge (GCTC) community strategic planning workshop working group series 2023 report. Link
• NIST Smart Cities and Communities Framework (SCCF). Link
• NIST GCTC CPAC Covid-19 Resource Kit for municipalities. Link
• NIST: 2019 Global City Teams Challenge: Smart and Secure Cities and Communities Challenge Expo. Link
• NIST: United States Perspective on Smart City Standards
• Technical Book: VMware Horizon 6 Desktop Virtualization Solutions, 2014
• Technical Book: Mastering VMware Horizon, 2015
Published Original Research Papers and Articles (authored or co-authored by CGIT staff)
• Coral Gables Innovation & Technology Bulletin: Success Stories, Launches, Collaborations. Link
• Coral Gables Smart City IT Strategic Plan. Published by CGIT, NIST, GCTC, GovTech, GovCIO. Link
• Smart City Case Study: City of Coral Gables Leverages the Internet of Things to Improve Quality of Life. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Internet of Things Magazine. Link
• Smart City Innovation and Technology Provides Opportunities for Collaboration. Gov CIO Mag. Link
• Coral Gables Smart Districts Cyber-physical Infrastructure. IEEE PES T&D. FL Eng. Link
• Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Real-World Signalized Traffic Corridor Control. PNNL, U.S. DOE, IEEE ICMLA. Links: IEEE - ResearchGate
• Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Improve Municipal Services and Quality of Life. Smart City Miami Magazine, GovAI. Long paper / Magazine short paper
• Building Safer and Smarter Cities of the Future. Gov CIO Mag. Link
• Cybersecurity Leadership in Action. Gov CIO Mag. Link
• Introducing Smart City Solutions into Highly Regulated Municipal Environment. Gov CIO Mag. Link
• City of Coral Gables Smart Building Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) IoT Plan. Link
• Smart City Case Study: City of Coral Gables COVID-19 CPS/IoT Data Analysis. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) GCTC CPAC and IEEE. Link
• Email Phishing Attacks to Local Municipalities on the Rise during the Covid-19 Pandemic. NIST GCTC. Link
• Smart Cities to Become Mainstream. CIO Review Magazine. Link
• Dealing with COVID-19: How Coral Gables, FL is Using IoT and Data Analytics to Respond. American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) PA Times Magazine, Florida International University (FIU). Link
• Applying Science, Collaboration and Experimentation to Improve Quality of Life. Smart City Miami Mag. Link
• Urban and Environmental Analytics in a Digital Twin Environment. Smart City Miami Magazine. Link
• Community Engagement on Smart City Projects. Smart City Miami Magazine. Link
• Coral Gables Resilient Smart Districts: quality of life, innovation, economic growth. Smart City M Mag. Link
• Smart City Technology Strategies for Water Management. OneWater Academy. Link
• The Role of Land Use and Walkability in Predicting Crime Patterns: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Miami Dade County Neighborhoods, 2007–2015. University of Miami (UM). Link
• Smart City Hub Meets the Needs of Modern Citizens. ESRI ArcNews GIS Magazine. Link
• Every Smart City Project is a Strategic Project. Gov CIO Outlook Magazine. Link
• City of Coral Gables IT Department Quality Engineering Framework Case Study. American Society for Quality (ASQ). Links: Paper Abstract / Quality Engineering Framework (framework # 2)
• Connected through a Disaster. IEEE Standards University. University Link - Paper Link
• Continuous Improvement in Municipal Information Technology Department. IISE and FIU. Link
• Coral Gables, a Smart City Journey. American Planning Association (APA) Technology Journal. Link
• Spatial Patterns of Larceny and Aggravated Assault in Miami–Dade County, 2007–2015. UM. Link
• Glossary of Smart Cities and Urban Computing Terms. Link
Future Vision and Planning Focus Areas:
• Smart Regions collaborative programs (inter-agency fiber corridors, civic innovation programs, data sharing and collaboration hubs, digital service platforms, techno-parks and science parks, technical service portfolio hubs, civic coders shared workspaces, challenges and hackathons, resource pools, economy of scale opportunities, resilience collaboration network…)
• New Centers of Excellence; Expansion of Kaizen programs and Community of Excellence initiatives
• Smart Curbside Management, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) programs; Smart Mobility Hubs
• Smart Water programs
• Expansion of smart, ubiquitous broadband networks – digital inclusion programs, e.g.: Gables TechTank
• Smart Meters, Smart Tariff, Smart Energy, Smart Grid and Load shaping, Renewables/Solar/Wind use cases
• Intersection of Art and Technology (interactive public spaces, interactive and AR art, tech-art, NFT art)
• Expansion of telehealth/telemedicine, telepresence, telework, virtual workspaces
• Expansion of real-time citywide sensor monitoring and automated alert systems
• Autonomous Vehicles and Connected Mobility (expand previous pilots)
• Intelligent/Connected Traffic signals and vehicles, traffic/energy AI optimization (NEXTCAR AutonomIA postresearch adoption, testbed expansion)
• Innovation and Design District (collaboration with Economic Development and strategic partners).
• Co-work/Co-innovation spaces, thinktanks, incubators. Digital workforce skill program: AI, IoT, blockchain.
• Business Corporate forum; multinationals, consular corps, retail technology marketing and innovation strategy. Coral Gables innovation and technology expo. Business accelerators.
• Expansion of digital assistants, conversational bots, natural language, XR, HCI, AI interactive gov’t systems, haptics, spatial computing, BMI, virtual simulation labs, digital twin BIM/VDC/CAD and IoT integration
• Expansion and acceleration of Generative AI (gen-AI) applications and AI governance frameworks/policies
• Urban Robotics (expand drones, UAS and other autonomous systems use cases and pilots)
• 5G+ and private wireless network applications; Satellite-Cellular integrated communications
• LiDAR photonics and computer vision – expansion of AI/ML applications
• Smart pole industrial design and branding expansion
• Nanotechnology applications (EMR/EMF, sensing, nanofabrication, and science of materials)
• Aerospace R&D collaboration (NASA, SpaceX/StarLink, ISS, P3’s…), CubeSats experiments (urban and environmental, telecommunications, education, STEM), Air Mobility, Vertiports, eVTOL
• Expand Singularity University collaborations (exponential cities/organizations/technologies, urban digital trends, abundance, futurology, computational neuroscience, tech intersections)
• Quantum computing and High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications and data modelling
• Blockchain smart city applications: digital ID, privacy, cyber-trust, cybersecurity, e-notarization, supply chain, Web3 and decentralized data platforms
• Strengths: CGIT demonstrates high maturity, teamwork, professionalism, adaptability, resilience, creativity, and reliability. The team excels in daily operations and crisis management (e.g., crises, hurricanes). Strong ICT/ICI cyberinfrastructure, communication services, enterprise hardware, AI adoption, and telecom outside plant infrastructure. Smart city roadmap, strategic plans, awards, and recognition. Collaboration across city departments on initiatives in public safety, economic development, sustainability, and process improvement. Disaster recovery and business continuity systems are robust, with energy and data redundancy. Supportive city leadership and community trust. Comprehensive policies, standardized operations, and Lean 6-Sigma QE programs. Compliance. Partnerships with universities, professional organizations, and innovation ecosystems. IT maturity, curiosity, tenacity, diversity of thought, knowledge, and excellent management support.
• Weaknesses: Insufficient automated workflows, cross-training, and succession planning. Network gaps in remote facilities. Resource and process gaps for citywide demands; Residual inter-departmental siloes and lack of knowledge transfer. Documentation and ITSM ticket management deficiencies. Insufficient training, crosscommunication, follow-up, and integration of IT assets. Inventory management gaps and residual manual processes. Miscommunication of IT goals and processes.
• Opportunities: Accelerated digital transformation, cloud adoption, grants, and regional collaboration with municipalities, universities, and professional organizations. Smart city and e-government initiatives (IoT, AI/ML, blockchain, RPA, XR/Web3, mobility, cybersecurity). Public safety and community intelligence projects. Smart City Research Lab, R&D, innovation initiatives, internships, and training opportunities. Gables TechTank Incubator. Regional transportation and economic development projects. Leveraging IT research labs, knowledge libraries, free courses, and continuing education. Growing responsibilities and challenging projects. Advancements in AI/ML, IoT, 3D printing and other emerging technologies.
• Threats: Power outages, network/telecom availability, hurricanes, natural disasters, and health crises. Budget constraints, revenue shortfalls, inflation, and policy/regulatory changes. Cybersecurity threats, infrastructure vulnerabilities, aging equipment. Employee stress, burnout, attrition, and resource shortages. Rapid disruptive technological changes, supply chain and market volatility, service provider reliability. Temporary solutions creating long-term inefficiencies. Rising costs, social/political risks, retention challenges, adversarial AI threats.
The Innovation & Technology Department (CGIT) reports to the City Manager and Deputy/Assistant City Manager Director / CIO: Raimundo Rodulfo, P.E., PMP | Assistant Director / CISO: Nelson Gonzalez, CISSP Sr. Project Manager / CDAIO: Lemay Ramos, CSSGB | Sr. Administrative Assistant: Anna Vall, PACE CGIT currently has 21 full-time and 3 part-time positions (23 FTE). CGIT has four operational divisions: Applications Division (Supervisor: Lemay Ramos. 6 F/T, 1 P/T):
• Applications & Programming - Develops and manages all software applications and ERP cloud suites for the enterprise. Maintains and supports more than 200 homegrown programs and off-the-shelf applications, including specialized products for the enterprise, public safety, community services, and services for residents and businesses. They provide day to day operational capability by front line city staff in Finance, Building and Permitting, Economic Development, Police and Fire, and Community Services. These applications require extensive network and systems support in order that staff have continuous access to the software and the information to provide needed services to our customers and constituents. Additionally, the records and data used and created on these applications need to be made secure and safe; properly maintained and backed up.
• Business Analysis and Software Engineering - Provides solutions to the City using Business Intelligence (BI) information technology and tools. This includes data science, analysis, applied AI, plans, software engineering and functions for enhancing public safety and business processes, operations, and information process flow.
Customer Support and GIS Division (Supervisor: Mark Hebert. 3 F/T, 2 P/T):
• Service Desk - Receives and manages all inbound calls for IT Service. They assist internal and external customers by providing phone support and remote customer support. They assign and dispatch field service staff for onsite response. The Service Desk retains ownership and tracks all calls until an issue is resolved. Call volume at the help desk exceeds 100 service request or incident reports per week. All these calls must be assessed and handled on the first contact, as practical. Otherwise, the call is escalated to one of the other IT divisions for scheduling and resolution. Help desk staff continue to manage and track each call, regardless of escalation, and they ensure that calls are responded to and resolved in an expedient and timely manner
• Field Service - Responsible for supporting day to day operations of all city departments; providing high quality onsite customer service and technical expertise. They work to resolve many kinds of PC, telecommunication, and network issues. Many IT calls for service and reports of incidents are handled by Help Desk staff over the phone or by email. When the situation requires a response escalation, staff is resourced from one of the divisions in IT and redirected to the customer site, or incident location.
• GIS & Research Lab - Manages the business, culture, R&D and organization of geographic information products, across the enterprise. GIS is an analytical and intelligence tool that can provide insights into data to understand trends, correlate interactions, and support group collaboration. GIS is spatial analysis through the manipulation of spatial data, the application of statistical analysis, and the creation of spatial models; producing maps, charts, graphs, web portals, 3D dashboards, apps, and spreadsheets that assist stakeholders with actionable information that supports key operations and fulfillment of customer needs The Research Lab brings together CGIT SMEs and interns from academic institutions to work on smart city research projects and initiatives.
• IT Asset Management: Stores and Receiving. IT has implemented an Asset Management (ITAM) system going forward in 2021 that is based off ITIL best practices. The Customer Support division manages the IT warehouse space under the practices set forth by the Network and Systems divisions for their hardware equipment and consumable supplies. Customer Support receives all items shipped to the IT Facilities campus and logs the receipt with notice to the rest of the department. Items received are placed into designated store locations in the IT warehouse. The ITAM is then updated to reflect asset disposition and deployment.
Systems Division (Supervisor: Ayanes Apolinar 4 F/T):
• Servers, Clients, IoT endpoints - Designs, engineers, analyzes, and supports server stack and client and IoT/CPS infrastructure and high-availability. This includes desktop and mobile computer hardware, smartphones and tablets devices, operating systems, system management utilities, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, smart lights, and distributed platforms infrastructure. Systems division maintains and supports over 1,000 end-customer devices for office desktop computing, and mobile in-field computers. This includes hundreds of devices wirelessly connected to the city network for Police and Fire personnel conducting public safety operations.
• Databases, Data Lakes, Backup and Storage - Designs, engineers, and supports database and storage system datacenter infrastructure stack and high-availability. This includes databases, data lakes, data backup systems and processes, centralized storage systems, smart city data marketplace, and data infrastructure. Systems orchestrates and continually maintain hundreds of physical and virtual servers running mission critical applications for the enterprise and department-level programs vital to serving resident and business needs in Coral Gables. Underpinning the applications on those servers are hundreds of databases and data lakes running on robust, high-capacity, high-availability data environments in datacenters and hybrid clouds. These services include all the hardware, connectivity, and redundancy to support daily data backups, off-site storage, on-site and remote failover capability, disaster recovery and off-site implementation for critical operations staffing.
• Cloud Computing, Hyper-Convergence and Virtualization – the scope of systems includes private and external cloud services, server and client virtualization and hyper-converged systems that provide a platform for a smart city ecosystem, reduce infrastructure footprint, increase interoperability, scalability, mobility, accessibility and availability of systems, services, and applications.
• Content Management - Responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining digital content management systems such as websites, mobile apps, CRM, digital signage, social media systems, collaboration platforms.
Network Division (Supervisor: Gisela Rodriguez 6 F/T)
• Network and Security - Designs, engineers, implements, and manages networking infrastructure, highavailability, and cybersecurity. This includes WAN/LAN, Intranet/Internet/Extranet, CCTV and ALPR systems, voice, data, and video network equipment, wireless and wired networks, SDN, and physical security systems.
• Telecommunications – Supports and manages hundreds of network connection and endpoint devices, that include all switches and routers for a diverse, multi-campus, multi-facility enterprise. Telecom staff designs, engineers, implements, manages telecommunication infrastructure, outside plant, services, and high availability. This includes voice, data, and video circuits, wireless and wired links, smart city IoT nodes and gateways, 911 PSAP, fiber optics network, telephony systems, SCADA telemetry, telecommunications towers, I.T. environmental and facilities maintenance. For telephony Telecom support a full call manager system across the enterprise with nearly 600 devices on office desk throughout our service domain, ensuring call quality, voicemail service, and switchboard/call transfer and conference call capabilities.
• Community Intelligence Center - Includes management and support of technical operations and public safety technology needs at the CIC. Monitoring, troubleshooting and operation of CCTV cameras, license plate reader systems, crime analysis systems, video management systems, traffic management systems, crime mapping technologies, public safety applications and other technologies. Assists public safety and other city personnel with data and video analytics requests (incidents, traffic engineering, events.)
1. Innovation and Technology (IT) Organization
i. Documents and References Index and Location
ii. City and IT Department Mission and Vision
iii. Department Functions and Goals
iv. I.T. Organizational Chart
v. I.T. Chart of Accounts
vi. I.T. Directory Contact List
vii. Documentation Standard Names and Location
2. IT Strategic Management Planning
i. Documents and References Index and Location
ii. I.T. Strategic Plan
iii. City Strategic Management Plan
iv. Balanced Scorecards - KBI and KPI Metrics Reporting
v. I.T. Steering Committee
vi. R&D and Innovation
vii. Outreach and Communication
3. IT Organization Policies, Rules and Regulations
i. Documents and References Index and Location
ii. Information Technology Policy
iii. City Rules and Regulation Section 23 (Email and Internet), 24 (Use of Cellular Phones), 30 (Social Media Policy and Content Guidelines), AI Use Policy
iv. City Records and Email Retention and Disposition Policies
v. Coral Gables CJIS Policy
vi. Police Computer SOP
vii. PCI Policies (PCI Compliance Program / Security Awareness Policy / Vulnerability Management Policy / Wardriving Policy / Policy for reviewing Data Center camera feeds / CGIT Systems Configuration Baseline / PCI Roles Review Policy)
4. IT Operation and Service Management
i. Documents and References Index and Location
ii. I.T. Operation Standard (CGITOS)
iii. I.T. Operation Plan (CGITOP)
iv. I.T. Comprehensive Incident Response Plan
v. I.T. Emergency Response Plan
vi. CIC Standard Operating Procedures
vii. I.T. Public Records Requests SOP
viii. I.T. Budget
ix. I.T. Infrastructure Capital Refresh Inventory
x. Homegrown Systems Inventory
xi. I.T. Infrastructure Diagrams (Network, Systems, Processes)
xii. I.T. Vendor Support Contact and Escalation Lists
xiii. Cyber-Liability Risk Management Policy
xiv. I.T. Forms
xv. I.T. Service Ticket Categories, IT Advisory Templates
xvi. I.T. Audits
xvii. References – Industry Standards and Best Practices in Use by CGIT (NIST, IEEE, ISO, PMI, IIBA, ITIL, PCI, HIPAA, CJIS, UCGIS, FL, NEC, CGHR, FEMA, COOP, CEMP, ESF, ADA, SOX)
5. IT Project Management and Business Analysis
i. Documents and References Index and Location
ii. I.T. PM and BA Standard Forms (Project Charter, Requirements, Stakeholder Register, Milestones, WBA)
iii. I.T. Strategic Projects Portfolio - Plan and Scheduling
INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIC PLAN
• 2016-2020 & 2021-2025: 10-Year Accomplishments
• 2026 Strategic Plan Update, Goals and Objectives
Raimundo Rodulfo, P.E., PMP, MSEM SMIEEE, ITIL, PCIP, CSSBB Chief Innovation Officer / Director of Innovation and Technology
Latest Version at: www.CoralGables.com/ITDocs
