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 companion with the New York Metropolis Dept. of Environmental Safety on enhancing the buildout and ongoing operation of town’s huge 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 similar to modular hydropower agency GenH and remedy plant design era software program maker Transcend undergo profitable pilots with town on testing the feasibility of deploying their applied sciences extra broadly.

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

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

The Environmental Tech Lab works with 20 departmental leaders throughout 12 metropolis bureaus to grasp 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 matters are bullet factors straight from the companies, so we all know we’ll be fixing actual challenges,” says Matlen.

Chosen candidates will have the ability to work straight with metropolis companies and subject material specialists to develop a pilot effort for his or her know-how, and a closing willpower on whether or not to advocate adopting it within the NYC DEP. Matlen says the profitable pilots will nonetheless need to 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 traits like synthetic intelligence, however getting an opportunity to actually put these applied sciences by way of 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 influence of that on vital infrastructure will proceed to be worse and worse, so to maintain up with all these calls for we want want instruments. So it’s about understanding one thing like AI as a software, but in addition be sure that it is going to be a world-class software price [the investment].”