Projects
Comeback KC Ventures
Accelerating Innovation to Jumpstart KC’s Comeback from COVID-19 – Comeback KC Ventures is funded through an 18-month SPRINT Challenge grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration and administered by KC Digital Drive and the UMKC Innovation Center.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Developer Challenge
KC Digital Drive is hosting an Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) Developer Challenge. The AR/VR Challenge will bring together entrepreneurs, hackers, makers, developers, and other creative minds with the goal of building AR applications that solve local problems.
Air Quality Sensors
KC Digital Drive, working with a group of community partners, is putting up an array of sensors across Kansas City that will be used to measure air quality microclimates and detect pollution sources. Through a partnership with US Ignite and funded by a National Science Foundation grant, KC Digital Drive received 50 air quality sensors that measure temperature, humidity, and particles (PM 2.5). As a citizen science project, residents in the targeted area will be able to participate by having a sensor on their property. A visualization map of the data received from the sensors will be available to the public.
Connected Roads and Vehicles: A Next Generation Mobility Workshop
This workshop is intended to identify project opportunities that connect leading edge academic research with the immediate problems facing local and state government, private industry, and entrepreneurs working in transportation and mobility infrastructure and solutions. It is the second in a series designed to meet future mobility challenges and opportunities, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The inaugural workshop in Fall 2019 included a multi-disciplinary discussion of societal trends and needs.
Local Government Reporter
Code for KC is supporting the design and development of a website that puts links to city council meetings and other local government business in one place, creating an easy resource designed for reporters and local media outlets who cover local government, in order to make their jobs easier and keep the public better informed.
Digital Contact Tracing
Contact tracing is critical to containing the spread of coronavirus. Manual contact tracing is a high-touch process managed by public health officials. As the number of confirmed cases in a community rise and sick patients requires more attention, preventative efforts like contact tracing become deprioritized in favor of direct treatment.
COVID-19 Symptom Self-Reporting
In the absence of widely available Covid-19 testing, region-wide KC metro efforts are underway to encourage self-reporting of symptoms and coordinate medical volunteer follow up with symptomatic patients.
Health Innovation Team
When people talk about how emerging technologies might have substantive impact on quality of life, health care is always at the forefront of the conversation. The use of telemedicine to expand access to expertise and services, the explosion of personal data and the quantified self to offer more precise care, the opportunities for massive data integration and analysis to improve system efficiency—all offer tremendous potential.
Tagging Tracker
The CRT Graffiti Abatement Pilot Project is a proactive approach to removing graffiti along the Prospect Avenue corridor of Kansas City. The Tagging Tracker Tool will provide the infrastructure to track the occurrence of graffiti and its abatement.
MetroLab Network
The MetroLab Network is a consortium of city-university partnerships across the US that fosters collaboration between local governments and academic researchers and practitioners. Faculty and students get access to real-life laboratories to test advanced approaches aimed at addressing city priorities and challenges.