Oviedo eyes technology partnership to “pull us into the future”

New health initiatives. State-of-the-art technologies. Green energy solutions. AI-powered tools. The city of Oviedo has been offered an opportunity to be part of a multi-city collaboration to identify and institute the development of technology-focused and data-driven initiatives by partnering with Altamonte Springs and its Altamonte Global Innovation Lab.

“Part of what the city of Altamonte Springs has done over the last 30 years has focused on innovation projects that would either save money, save time or create some sustainability for our city,” Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz said. 

Projects Altamonte Springs has already worked on and developed includes the Altamonte Springs Science Incubator, “a program promoting career readiness in the high-tech, high-demand fields of science, technology, engineering and math,” and it “offers hands-on activities and experiences for Seminole County middle and high school students,” according to a presentation Martz gave at Oviedo City Council’s Feb. 17 meeting. Over the last 12 years, about 35,000 students have utilized the lab, with 21 earning college scholarships from the program.

The Oviedo City Council voted to partner with the city of Altamonte Springs and the Altamonte Global Innovation Lab (Graphic via city of Altamonte Springs)

In addition to the Incubator, the city provides water resource management, wastewater treatment and operations education and workforce development, projects with autonomous and sensor-equipped vehicles, a floating solar power supply, and pureALTA, a drinking water project that won national and international technology and innovation awards.

And while the city has done much innovation on its own, Martz said he sees a big benefit in partnering with Oviedo and other Seminole and, eventually, Orange County municipalities.

“Part of the vision behind creating the Innovation Lab and the discussions that [Oviedo City Manager Bryan] Cobb and I have had is the ability for all of us to stand together,” Martz said. “Costs are going up, so if there’s a way for us to procure together, evaluate ideas together — Seminole County is a relatively small place and we’re all connected. Our success is connected.

“What we’re going to try to do is chase grants, and chase things that can improve Seminole County residents’ lives and business’ lives.”

Martz said he has spoken with nearby city managers, like Cobb, over the past few months to get more local buy-in for large-scale innovative project development.

“[The partnership] is going to give us the opportunity to take advantage of the things that they’re talking about,” Cobb said. “That’s what’s exciting to me: it’s going to bring new things to us.”

Utilizing newer technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, could help the cities become more efficient, not only by utilizing it for streamlining departments like Human Resources — which Altamonte Springs has done with its “Herman Resources” chatbot — but by streamlining infrastructure and city development projects with the use of drones and AI.

A Human Resources chatbot is among the many innovations being worked on by Altamonte Springs (Graphic provided by city of Altamonte Springs)

Esri, one of the leading geospatial and mapping programming platforms, has been using Altamonte Springs as a beta site for high-resolution mesh photography, which produces hundreds of thousands of images of the city and puts them together into a giant composite image. Each image can have development orders, site plans, permits and more attached to them, Martz said. 

Additionally, generative AI can help the city — as well as Oviedo as part of the partnership — with infrastructure savings. It can be used to determine when streetlights need bulb replacements, order the replacement and dispatch someone to install it, eliminating the need to store extra bulbs in a warehouse or have the city without a working streetlight.

“I’ve been to the lab … it’s a really interesting space,” Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said. “You just bring your best ideas, whatever your cool idea is. If you’re really good at it, and you’re willing to teach other people, there’s other people who are really good at something else willing to teach you. And that’s the idea.”

The partnership, which city council approved, would cost Oviedo $3,000 annually for expenditures like website development, marketing and communications.

”I’ve been watching Frank and Altamonte for many years do some of this stuff, and it’s pretty impressive what you guys pull off over there,” council member Keith Britton said, “Maybe you can pull us into the future a little bit.”

Other Oviedo news: Basin study grant

Council voted 5-0 to have the city apply for a $300,000 Hazard Mitigation Grant Program – Watershed Planning Program Grant to the Florida Department of Emergency Management. The grant would require a 25% — or $75,000 — city match.

The funds would be used for the Alafaya Woods subdivision/Little Econlockhatchee River Watershed. The Little Econ water basin is about 3.5 square miles, and all of the subdivision sits inside of it. The city of Oviedo is about 16 square miles total.

Watersheds and basins are plots of land that collect rainwater and channel it to bodies of water, such as a river, stream, wetland or lake.

The Alafaya Woods neighborhood sits inside of the the Little Econ water basin (Map provided by the City of Oviedo)

The plan would include data inventory and collection, a gap analysis to see what data may be missing, reviewing regulations, performing an existing conditions analysis for “10-, 50-, 100- and 500-year storms,” Oviedo’s assistant city engineer/engineering manager Paul Yeargain said. 

This work would help the city identify where flooding occurs, potential service gaps and allow the city to develop solutions to remedy those gaps. Yeargain said they would also plan to perform water-quality analysis inside of the basin as part of the grant.

Much of the infrastructure inside of the basin and Alafaya Woods, which was built in the 1980s, is either at or past the design service life, Yeargain said, “so it’s really in need of evaluation.

“And also, in Hurricane Ian, that basin sustained the most physical damage to city infrastructure,” he said. “So it’s a pretty important basin.”

The $75,000 of matching funds from utility fees from the city was already allocated to be used to pay for future basin studies. 

“So we’re basically getting a grant to pay for what we’re already going to do,” Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert said. 

“I’m really excited to get these basin studies kicked off,” she said. “We’ve been talking about them for over a year now.”

The study is expected to take about two years, Yeargain said. 

“The idea [going forward] is that we would try to do at least a basin study every year or so,” he said. “The idea is we kind of get it with this one and do the rest of the city.”