AST Magazine February 2018 final-feb-2018 | Page 9

Volume 20
February 2018 Edition
SCITI Labs, the latest collaboration between U.S. Department of Homeland
Security and TechNexus, aims to bring purpose & scope into the ‘Safe
Cities’ mix through the lens of First Responders.
SCITI Labs: Smart City Techs for First Responders
Smart Cities.
It’s a topic that for most is no longer a foreign concept or
a figment of the imagination, however if you ask some-
one what a ‘smart city’ is, you’ll likely get a broad answer
about autonomous vehicles or another trending technol-
ogy.
SCITI Labs, the latest collaboration between U.S. Depart-
ment of Homeland Security (DHS), and TechNexus, aims
to change that by bringing purpose and scope into the
mix through the lens of First Responders.
SCITI Labs, which kicked off in early 2018, stands for
smart city internet of things (IoT) innovation and builds
on the success of the EMER GE Accelerator by going
beyond innovation exploration to commercialization.
EMERGE, leveraging a global set of entrepreneurs from
distinct industries like construction and mining, has set
the foundation for wearable technology that will make up
the ‘Next Generation of First Responders’.
The program plans to prototype, test, and introduce to market new
smart city technologies for emergency response management by
creating pathways for those applications into broader industrial
and tangential markets.
This collaborative methodology is not a new concept for TechNexus,
whose core business actively works in partnership with enterprises
to drive sustainable growth by accelerating the time and way in
which they engage with startups.
(NGFR Apex Program seeks to help tomorrow’s first responder be more protected,
connected and fully aware.)
As no strangers to this type of work, the TechNexus team in partner-
ship with the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) and
Smart City Works has set a lofty goal for the launch of SCITI Labs:
7