Coppell looks to the future to become smart city by 2030

Coppell Gazette
By Arianna Morrison | Star Local Media
January 12, 2023

Coppell City Council met for their first meeting of 2023 on Tuesday, Jan. 10 to receive an update from the Smart City Board.

The Smart City Board was created by the Coppell City Council and was inspired by CoppellVision2040. It operates as an advisory board and recommends ways the city can take actions and initiatives to create a Smart City future for Coppell. The board also reviews the scope of the Smart City Model, which is based on stakeholders innovations, trends and needs to maintain and advance the city’s smart city future.

“This was designed to prepare Coppell for its citizens, trying to make sure that we leverage the technology and all of the communication innovations that are happening,” said Smart City Board Chair Ramesh Premkumar.

The Smart City Board had their first board meeting in January 2020 and established a framework for Smart City operations in October 2020. In November 2021, the board presented recommendations to the city council for climate action, adaptation and renewable energy, and connected homes and business through smart buildings.

During the council meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 10, Premkumar brought forward two recommendations on behalf of the Smart City Board: one for congestion, TaaS, and autonomous vehicles, and one for robotic workforce and automated city services.

Before going into their recommendations, the Smart City Board suggested to the city council that they should brand Coppell as a smart city by 2030.

“We think Coppell is already doing wonderful things to be branded as a smart city,” Premkumar said. “We think that the city council should empower the staff to come up with a marketing strategy in 2023 and perhaps propose a budget in 2024 to start marketing Coppell as a smart city.”

When it comes to the board’s recommendation for congestion, TaaS, and autonomous vehicles, Premkumar said that the purpose would be to apply emerging transportation technology to solve traffic congestion while expanding mobility options to residents, which would improve the quality of life for residents through less congestion, great connectivity, and safety for residents, businesses, and city staff through the adoption of AV.

In order to make this recommendation a reality, the Smart City Board suggested designating a city representative to establish a relationship with Texas Connected & Autonomous Vehicle Task Force to explore pilots and grant for future AV routes, establish an AV related ecosystem by inviting strategic partners to implement and deploy revenue generating or cost sharing solutions, at low-cost to the city, and engage residents to identify ideas for leveraging AVs.

For the second recommendation on robotic workforce and automated city services, the purpose would be to ride the wave of virtual government and robotization to deliver elevated convenience and to optimize efficiency of city services.

As a city, the board recommends that Coppell prioritize and implement future smart city applications. Assessment should include consideration of applicable value from implementation of such services, said Smart City Board Member Erin Bogdanowicz.

“So far as what there is out there — first of all, 3D printing. When I think of 3D printing, I think of those little printers that our kids are using to print toys, but they are doing such amazing things with 3D printing right now,” Bogdanowicz said. “Dubai was the first city to actually print an entire administrative building using 3D printing and they are printing houses, residential neighborhoods in days. So, talking about the Belt Line project, that thing would be done by now if we’re talking about 3D printing. We really can improve the services to our citizens with 3D printing, which is going to be a huge thing in the future.”

More examples of suggested services that Coppell could implement in the future include city managed autonomous vehicles and public transportation, drones for city inspections, robotic support for law enforcement, fire, rescue, and surveillance, automation softwares for city operations, and automated visitor contact points, receipt and payment of city services.

To bring the Smart City Board’s recommendation to life, the city of Coppell would need to analyze cost and cost sharing opportunities, adjustment in budget, and reallocation of resources for smart city initiatives. The city would also need to engage an expert to assist the city in achieving and implementation of goals including evaluation of use cases.

“When the Smart City Board was created, we knew it was going to be a long, evolving operation and I think you guys have made some great strides and we look forward to hearing the updates,” Coppell Mayor Wes Mays said. “Thank you very much for all the work that you guys do. I know a lot of it is behind the scenes and it’s not happening yet, but it’s coming and a lot of your data is showing that.”