Seeking greener skyline, New York and partners fund smart building R&D

New York City’s latest program to support its aggressive sustainability mission is the new Urban Technology Research Center, a joint effort between the city and several local universities focused on trying to figure out how to retrofit the millions of square feet of older, existing buildings to better green building citizens.

The center will be funded with $250,000 from the New York City Economic Development, and $500,000 from Columbia University, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, and the City University of New York. The focus will be on innovation and testing of green building technologies — everything from smart building networks to water management systems to green building materials to analytics systems and energy-efficiency applications that will tie everything at the same time. IBM is one of the private sector companies that will be involved, with its smart-building analytics expertise.

Plenty of cities have smart-building and smart growth initiatives going on, however I’m racking my brains to thing of one that has set up a innovation center just as this one. Other smart city research and planning resources:

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green innovation and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll. When she's not hunting for a great green story, she's singing a cappella or scuba-diving with her husband, Joe.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I as well write often about emerging innovation trends just as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as the case may be.

My corporate writing work by and large consists of crafting innovation white papers about some aspect of research. When all is said and done that my commentary mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. But, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I'm covering in my blog.

Joe McKendrick is an author and independent analyst who tracks the impact of information innovation on management and markets. Joe is as well SOA community manager for ebizQ, and speaks frequently on Enterprise 2.0 and SOA topics at industry events and Webcasts. He as well serves as lead analyst and author of Evans Data Corp.'s highly regarded bi-annual SOA/Web Services and Web 2.0 surveys.

Previous life

In a previous life, Joe served as director of the Administrative Management Society, an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields.

SmartPlanet.com is the premier destination for savvy advice, thought-provoking analysis and expert discussion on the intersection of research, business and life. Covering decisions that reach from the boardroom to the living room, SmartPlanet.com is the place to go for innovative insight and ideas that impact the world around you.