Orlando looks to improve future-readiness, resiliency as part of its smart city journey

Introduction

Orlando, Fla., is best known as a tourist hub hosting tens of millions of travelers annually at its theme parks. Beyond the entertainment industry, the region has also seen an uptick in tech, telecom, advanced manufacturing, and research and development vendors relocating to the region. According to Tim Giuliani, president and CEO of the Orlando Economic Partnership (OEP), 69 companies have moved to or expanded their operations in the region since 2022.

As the city looks to build climatic and economic resilience, it has invested in a long-term, future-ready initiative based on adopting emerging technologies, instilling new policy frameworks and tapping public-private partnerships. One of Orlando's most notable projects is its digital twin, built in partnership with video game developer Unity Software Inc. While it currently serves as an informative tool for government and industry users, the city hopes to operationalize the twin and bring in real-time data.

Snapshot

Source: 451 Research.

The Take

Orlando's approach to building future-ready technology competencies reflects its unique drivers and challenges. As a city that sees millions of tourists annually — and will be on the forefront of a confluence of climate events like extreme heat, flooding and sea-level rise — resilience is imperative. Orlando has an opportunity to serve as a model for proactively deploying smart city technologies to protect against and mitigate climate impacts while continuing to serve as one of the country's most popular tourist destinations.

With a strong policy framework outlining its technology objectives, the metro is a proponent of peer learning, public-private partnerships and tapping federal funding opportunities to achieve digital transformation and resilience. According to 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things, the OT Perspective, Use Cases & Outcomes 2023 survey, the majority (57% of respondents) of governments plan to use federal grants, including those directed from the Inflation Reduction Act, to pay for smart city initiatives (figure 1).

Adoption drivers

Orlando has been an active participant in several federal smart city initiatives and has been awarded multiple US Department of Transportaion grants related to accelerated innovation deployment and advanced mobility. The region has categorized its own smart city drivers into the following categories: mobility, water, health and safety, and energy and connectivity. With a 100-plus-page future-ready city plan published, Orlando is looking to build its resilient and adaptable city with a strong policy underpinning. The following offer insight into some of the initiatives already in place: 

City-wide open data. Orlando's open data portal was launched with Tyler Technologies in 2016 with the goal of offering citizens transparent access to city information and services. Residents can access 88 data sets and create their own visualizations out of them, such as business permit applications, crime incidents  and new residential developments.  

5G and small cells. These technologies underpin all smart city deployments in high-speed connectivity. In efforts to bridge the digital divide and enable connectivity for citizens, Orlando has worked with Crown Castle to deploy 75 small-cell nodes around the city. The deployment aims to help the region bridge the digital divide and provide a low-latency connectivity backbone for smart city use cases such as autonomous vehicles and video analytics.

Advanced air mobility: Orlando is seeking to prepare policy and infrastructure for advanced air mobility and electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. The city has crafted an AAM transportation plan to anticipate economic and environmental impacts of the emerging mobility. NASA, eVTOL developer Lilium and vertiport developer Tavistock are among Orlando's partners for AAM. It plans to have a vertiport available by 2025 for a high-speed electric air mobility network in Lake Nona.

Figure 1: Metros turn to federal funding for smart city projects

Source: 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things, the OT Perspective, Use Cases & Outcomes 2023.
Q. How are your smart city initiatives funded? Please select all that apply.
Base: Government respondents (n=67).
© 2023 S&P Global.

Digital twin with Unity

Orlando has worked with platform developer Unity Software to build a high-fidelity digital twin of 800 square miles in and around the region. The digital twin, which is in its first phase, offers high-fidelity imaging into 40 to 50 square miles. It emerged as a project out of the Orlando Economic Partnership, a private nonprofit dedicated to attracting investment into the region. The OEP offers the digital twin as an enabling tool for governments, utilities, telcos, real estate developers and local universities.

The twin pulls in data from over 200 sources, including HereMap, ESRI, Costar and some first-party data. Individual users can "stack" layers as needed. Users often pull data on available real estate, connectivity metrics and energy infrastructure sites. Users can put their own parameter on a tablet, which will be transposed onto the digital twin. Unity is responsible for data security of the twin, which sits on an air-gapped server on-premises with no connectivity to outside servers. The tool is primarily for marketing and regional visualization, although the city hopes to operationalize it with real-time data and offer user-based profiles in its future phases.

In the digital twin's second phase, the OEP plans to host the twin in the cloud and bring in real-time data via APIs. The OEP is also looking to enable the monetization of the twin for users in the utilities, real estate, and other verticals. By offering high-fidelity digital environment, the city could see a return on investment from leasing the tool to users.

Looking forward: Working with Orlando

In its future-ready plan, Orlando has articulated the technologies and services it will look to adopt in the coming years. It outlines cost, relevant examples and key performance indicators associated with each outcome. Vendors looking to work with the city will have to do so through the City of Orlando Vendor Link. Vendors aiming to support projects within the region can find individual bids at the link, but broadly in line with a handful of areas, including:

Microgrid and distributed energy resource integration. Working with the Orlando Utility Commission (OUC), the city has a long-term plan to integrate a city-wide energy microgrid system capable of ensuring backup power for critical infrastructure.

Fiber infrastructure. Expanding city fiber infrastructure is a key priority for the region under its mid- and long-term strategies. Orlando is specifically positioning its investment in fiber as an enabler of future advanced traffic management systems. This could be pursued by an internet service provider, telco or cable operator.

Unified transit fare collection app. The city is aiming to develop a unified fare collection system on a mobile app as a short-term priority for the region. The move follows the trend among many cities of enhancing public transportation efficiency and service quality to increase ridership and reduce transit related emissions. This opportunity could be pursued by a fare payments-as-a-service provider such as Masabi or Token Transit.

Community-wide water consumption monitoring. Collaborating with the OUC, Orlando is examining the use of smart water meters and advanced metering infrastructure for leak detection and automatic reporting. The project will be tied to a database and automated with real-time usage analytics for community-wide water consumption monitoring. Beyond the OUC, vendors like Itron Inc., Sensus and Schneider Electric SE could be aligned with the opportunity.

Air quality monitoring network. As the city looks to enhance data availability related to hyperlocal air quality metrics, it is aiming to deploy a pilot to monitor air quality in vulnerable communities and support indoor air quality outcomes. Clarity, Tellus or Aeroqual are US-based AQM providers that could fit Orlando's bill.