Attend the April EPN Breakfast

The April breakfast for the Environmental Professionals Network is Columbus, One Smart and Sustainable City – Using Innovative Technology to Improve People’s Access to Opportunity with presenter Aparna Dial, Deputy Director, Dept. of Public Service, City of Columbus. Participants can interact with 14 OSU senior capstone teams, learnng about their projects. The students come from ENR/AEDE 4567, Assessing Sustainability, Project Experience, and worked with Smart City staff, and ENR 4900.01, Environment and Natural Resources Management, and worked on water resources.

The City of Columbus won the U.S. Department of Transportation $40 million Smart City Challenge in June, 2016 after competing against 77 cities nationwide to implement a holistic vision for how technology can help all residents to move more easily and to access opportunity. Columbus was also awarded a $10 million grant from Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc. Foundation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the de-carbonization of the electric supply and transportation sectors. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther announced February 22nd   that between those grants and the growing list of local match projects, including several OSU research projects, the Smart Columbus project has about $417 million in resources to turn Columbus into the testing ground for intelligent-transportation systems. The City’s total goal for Smart City and related projects by 2020 is $1 billion. Aparna Dial last spoke at an EPN breakfast April 12, 2016, the day she flew to Washington, DC to help present the City’s grant proposal as one of the seven finalist cities.