LTC 408-2018 Bloomberg Mayors Challenge UpdateMIAMI BEACH
OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER
NO. LTC # LETTER TO COMMISSION
408-2018
TO: Mayor Dan Gelber and Members of the c· y Comm is
FROM: Jimmy L. Morales, City Manager
DATE : July 24, 2018
SUBJECT: Bloomberg Mayors Challenge Update
I am pleased to provide an update on our progress with the Bloomberg Philanthropies
Mayors Challenge. In February, Miami Beach was recognized and selected and
awarded $100,000 by Bloomberg Philanthropies as one of 35 Champion Cities in the
2018 . On February 21 51 , 2018 , I provided a Letter to Commission with the full details of
this grant competition .
The Bloomberg Mayors Challenge was designed with urgency in mind. It is about
thinking big and being bold and inventing replicable and scalable solutions to today's
toughest problems. Simply stated, our idea is to transform integrated meteorological and
tidal predictions with real time data and crowdsourcing into a simple and easy to use
alert app with information to protect people and property. The Miami Beach Team has
been busy co-creating our innovation idea under the guidance of a coach to support
testing and refining of our idea . I invite you to view our team's progress through this
short video created with project funding (also accessed through this link
https://voutu.be/sJOB-obN-nk).
The Miami Beach Bloomberg team is testing the most recent prototype at City Hall in
3rd floor breezeway on July 25th between 9:30am and 11 :30am. The City of Miami
will also be on site to test their long-term personal property adaptation tool. We are in
the prototype phase, which is a preliminary model of the final product. Prototype tests
provide excellent feedback, and help refine our idea to get them ready for a final
application in August. One $5 million dollar prize and four $1 million prizes will be
awarded to cities to implement their ideas . Our team was invited by the Bloomberg
Philanthropies to share testing results and outcomes alongside the City of Miami. Both
cities will be applying for the grand prize within one application in August. This will
strengthen our concept and broaden the benefit to the Greater Miami area .
Please contact Susanne Torriente, Chief Resilience Officer/ Assistance City Manager, or
Amy Knowles, Deputy Resilience Officer for further information on this innovation
project. For more details about the Challenge and the other cities please see the
attached press release or visit
http://m ayorschallenge . bloom berg. org/ and www . m brisingabove. com
JLM/SMT/ALK