New York City Seeks Startup Applicants for Water Tech Pilot Program

Startup corporations with {hardware} and software program improvements will quickly have an opportunity to associate with the New York Metropolis Dept. of Environmental Safety on enhancing the buildout and ongoing operation of the town’s large municipal water system.

The Environmental Tech Lab is seeking applicants for its annual startup incubator and pilot take a look at program that lets builders of rising applied sciences put their instruments to the take a look at with the world’s largest municipal water system. The lab is a collaboration between NYC DEP and the nonprofit arm of the Partnership Fund for New York Metropolis, an advocacy group of enterprise executives from distinguished native corporations.

Now in its third yr, the aggressive program has seen previous startups reminiscent of modular hydropower agency GenH and remedy plant design technology software program maker Transcend undergo profitable pilots with the town on testing the feasibility of deploying their applied sciences extra extensively.

Applications are due Aug. 8, with an data session for potential candidates set for July 10.

“One of many foremost objectives of this course of is to co-create a brand new worth for the expertise,” explains Stacey Matlen, senior vp for innovation applications on the Partnership Fund for New York Metropolis. 

The Environmental Tech Lab works with 20 departmental leaders throughout 12 metropolis bureaus to know their priorities, after which selects main themes for that yr’s competitors. The themes for this year’s competition are operational optimization and analytics; and emergency response and safety. “Under these huge subjects are bullet factors immediately from the businesses, so we all know we’ll be fixing actual challenges,” says Matlen.

Chosen candidates will be capable of work immediately with metropolis businesses and subject material consultants to develop a pilot effort for his or her expertise, and a remaining dedication on whether or not to suggest adopting it within the NYC DEP. Matlen says the profitable pilots will nonetheless must undergo regular procurement processes after that, however what they’ve gained in working with the DEP is invaluable.

And for the DEP, it’s not nearly chasing developments like synthetic intelligence, however getting an opportunity to essentially put these applied sciences via their paces, Matlen provides. “It’s extra about future-proofing than catching up; all municipal water methods are being tasked with doing extra with much less,” she says. “The affect of that on important infrastructure will proceed to be worse and worse, so to maintain up with all these calls for we’d like want instruments. So it’s about understanding one thing like AI as a instrument, but in addition make sure that will probably be a world-class instrument value [the investment].”