Editor's note: Video originally aired in May 2018, "Building affordable housing is not cheap"
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan created the city's first Innovation Advisory Council (IAC) in 2018. The goal was to leverage technology in addressing some of Seattle's ongoing issues like homelessness, affordability, and access to basic services.
The IAC includes city officials and members of major companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Tableau, and Zillow.
The city has now announced 7 projects formed by the IAC and which of Seattle's tech giants are backing each project.
Project overview: The Affordable Housing Search Tool project will create a centralized way to locate available affordable housing. The search tool will also provide a listing platform for the Housing Connector, specifically for people who are experiencing homelessness and seeking housing through the homelessness system.
Project team: Zillow Group, Loftium, Housing Connector (Hosted by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce), Seattle Office of Housing, Seattle IT
Project overview: The Earthquake Early Warning project will build a last-mile alert prototype to deliver early warning of impending hazardous ground shaking to key public safety officials enrolled in a beta test. The project will provide critical feedback to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to help test the effectiveness of their earthquake sensor network and notification platform. The knowledge gained from this beta project will help prepare for a successful launch to the general public in the Pacific Northwest.
Project team: Office of Emergency Management, Amazon Web Services, Twitter
Project overview: Reporting on homeless investments often takes weeks to manually update spreadsheets, reconcile, and validate before analysis even begins. The University of Washington Information School Capstone Course is working with Seattle Human Services Department, Amazon and Tableau to create a data model solution that will automate a manual process and create a connection between input data and business visualizations.
Project team: University of Washington Information School Capstone Program, Amazon, Tableau, Human Services Department
Project overview: The Youth Opportunity Portal seeks to create a central online website to youth programs with a centralized application, making it easy for young people ages 12-24 to access jobs and skill building opportunities, to develop those skills over time, and to plan for an economically secure and personally empowering career. This project aims to improve city programs by ensuring our youth programming is accessible, impactful, and relevant.
Project team: Technology Access Foundation, Microsoft, Facebook, Mayor's Office Policy Team, Innovation & Performance, Office of Economic Development, Human Services Department, Parks & Recreation
Project overview: The NavApp 2.0 project will improve the ability for the Navigation Team to better collaborate efforts through data in connecting unsheltered individuals with existing services and create faster resolutions to hazardous situations. This effort will also ensure better transparency with more efficient and timely reporting for evaluating Navigation Team performance and program continuous improvement.
Project team: Microsoft, Human Services Department, Seattle IT, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle Fire Department, Innovation & Performance, Seattle Human Services Department
Project overview: The Earthquake Damage Assessment project focuses on improving the City's ability to obtain and analyze damage assessment information after an earthquake event by determining how to pull information from multiple sources into a single system for damage information.
Project team: Office of Emergency Management, Amazon Web Services, Twitter, Northeastern University
Project overview: The Affordability Portal seeks to create an online information and screening tool to connect individuals and families to City of Seattle benefit programs and services that can lower their cost of living. The portal will support both benefit seekers and the professional and informal navigators such as case workers and family members who support them.
Project team: Expedia, Tableau, F5, Innovation & Performance, Seattle IT
