Chattanooga (the Gig City)has teamed with the US Ignite Partnership, launching tomorrow at the White House, to capitalize on what is possible through virtualized ultra-fast broadband networks, and “ignite” the development of next-generation Internet applications and services for American businesses and families.
“Chattanooga is already experiencing benefits of next-generation broadband connectivity” said Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield. “Between the area’s successes in attracting and retaining businesses to our active entrepreneurial community, the US Ignite partnership will help us take advantage of EPB’s ultra-fast fiber optic network even more.”
The primary goal of the US Ignite Partnership will be to catalyze approximately 60 advanced, next-gen applications over the next five years in six areas of national priority: education and workforce development, advanced manufacturing, health IT, transportation, public safety, and clean energy. Responsibilities of the Partnership will include connecting, convening, and supporting startups, local and state government, universities, industry leaders, federal agencies, foundations, and community and carrier initiatives in conceptualizing and building new applications. The resulting new applications should have a significant impact on the US economy, including providing a broad range of job and investment opportunities.
High-bandwidth applications developed in Chattanooga include the UTC SimCenter’s disaster mitigation application. In the event of a chemical spill, so-called “dirty bomb,” natural disaster or other event posing a risk to public safety, the application can provide site-specific plume pathway analysis together with real time dynamic population modeling to safely dispatch first-responders and provide evacuation instructions to individual members of the general public.
“If something has happened in a city, maybe a chlorine spill, or maybe a fire, there will be a need to bring the emergency services up and get them deployed to the region where this is happening, to divert the population away from this region, and to bring necessary resources in to it to deal with the situation,” said Dr. Henry McDonald, Chair of Excellence in Computational Engineering, SimCenter, National Center for Computational Engineering at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “Our software system does all that.”
EPB’s Smart Grid is another application developed in Chattanooga. The fiber optic network acts as the backbone for thousands of devices and controls along the electric distribution system to communicate with each other, customers, and the utility. The Smart Grid, although in its final stages of completion, is demonstrating reduced outage duration, analytics for improvements in power quality and operational efficiencies.
“Chattanooga is a town of collaborators. The US Ignite partnership will help us grow our network of people and organizations who want to collaborate to maximize the value of true broadband for communities across the country,” said Mayor Littlefield.