by Sharon Nunes
Have you ever thought that one day you might turn on a faucet and no water would come out? Did you ever consider that getting a glass of water from a restaurant could cost money? While these scenarios might seem far-fetched today, a water crisis is looming — and if we don’t get serious about smarter water management, it can – and will – become a reality.
The world’s population tripled in the 20th century, and according to the World Water Council, the use of renewable water resources has grown sixfold in that timeframe. Within the next fifty years, the world population is expected to increase by another 40 to 50 percent. This population growth – coupled with industrialization and urbanization – will result in an increasing demand for water. But overall, little has been done to address this crucial issue. Consider the Clean Water Act of 1972. Although it was put into place to create an era of technological innovation, the promise is still largely unfulfilled.
In his recent speech ushering in the Decade of Smart, our chairman, Sam Palmisano, pointed out that applying smarter technologies to drive cost out of legacy systems and institutions—doing more with less—would be critical to near-term and long-term economic prospects. He emphasized that we need to do more than extend the useful lifetime of our infrastructures – we must ensure that next-generation systems are inherently more efficient, flexible and resilient.
Up to 50 percent of usable water is lost due to leaky pipes. To put this into perspective, imagine that when you fill up your car with gas, half of that gas drips to the ground, wasted, instead of flowing into your tank. The good news is that there are many ways to extend the useful lifetime of our water infrastructures around the world – and to look at water management in new ways and build new, smarter systems that take into account the true value of this critical resource.
For example, IBM is working with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) to provide deep insight into the management of their water supply and usage so they can improve the quality of their water while reducing the costs associated with minimizing pollution. SFPUC, which treats an average of 80-90 million gallons of wastewater per day during dry weather and up to 370 million gallons of combined wastewater and storm runoff per day during the rainy season, is working with IBM to develop smarter management of the city’s 1,000 miles of sewer system and three treatment facilities.
We are also working with water utilities around the world – in Europe, Australia, China, Japan, to name a few – to help improve the availability and quality of drinking water and to help add efficiency to the management of water management systems.
With advances in technology—sophisticated sensor networks, smart meters, deep computing and analytics—we can be smarter about how we manage our planet’s water. We can monitor, measure and analyze entire water ecosystems, from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes. We can give all the people, organizations, businesses, communities and nations dependent on a continuing supply of freshwater—that is, all of us—a single, reliable, up-to-the-minute view of the way we use water. And by doing so, we can help build a sustainable, smarter planet.
Sharon Nunes is vice president of IBM Big Green Innovations, a portfolio of environmentally-focused initiatives at IBM.
Twitter Helps My “Smart Home” Reduce Energy Usage and Trim Electricity Bills by One-Third
by Andy Stanford-Clark
The science of how things work has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. As a young lad, I developed a way for my Mum to dry her washing outside without it getting wet when it rained. I set up a simple buzzer that would go off when a sensor detected falling rain. When Mum heard the signal, it was time to grab the laundry off the line.
Today I’m still trying to “connect the dots” of how my family and I can pursue a lifestyle that reduces our use of natural resources.
Using the same “messaging” software I work on with my development team at IBM’s software lab in Hursley, UK, I’ve made my 16th Century cottage on the Isle of Wight into a modern-day “smart home,” so I know exactly how much electricity and water I’m using, and when I’m using them.
While some might scoff at this, having this knowledge has enabled my family to reduce our personal carbon footprint and slash energy bills by one-third.
Here’s how it works: About a dozen wireless sensors are hooked up to the electricity and water systems and other things in the house. The sensors collect information, which is fed into an analytics system that makes “intelligent” decisions based upon that information. The updates are distributed to a display in my house, and as a stream of messages on Twitter, the social networking communications tool, which I can watch on the web, or on my mobile.
The “tweets,” or brief status messages, talk about how much electricity or water is being used, or even if a mouse has been caught in a trap in the attic. I can see unusual activity: if I’ve left on a heater, my home “talks to me,” via Twitter, and I can go find what’s causing the spike in electricity use.
The information on display has become part of the home’s ambient background, like having a light on in the kitchen. You know it’s there: but unless the light starts flickering, you don’t pay much attention to it. Unless my home “tweets” me that something unusual is happening, such as a window left open on a cold day, the messages blend into the household’s background.
Feeling good about helping the environment can be contagious. What if all of us got involved? According to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, 47 percent of the country’s carbon emissions come from the way the nation generates heat. The DECC has set a goal of having “smart meters” in all homes in the UK by 2020 to monitor gas and electricity usage.
If you don’t want to wait until 2020, you don’t need a Ph.D. to install and use the relatively inexpensive gadgets available to monitor your energy use and to begin conserving energy immediately.
Sometimes what we do for ourselves can benefit many others.
Like many commuters, I want to spend the least amount of time on my commute.
Strong winds or fog can delay the ferries running between my home on the Isle of Wight and my workplace near Winchester.
By tapping into data available online about the location of the Red Jet ferries, I began timing my arrival at the dock to when a ferry would actually leave. I began sharing this information via Twitter to other passengers. To its credit, the Red Funnel line saw the value in this information, and now the company provides a constant stream of information about the ferry schedule to their passengers who follow the company on Twitter. This is not ferry personnel posting the information to Twitter manually, it’s a tweetject (an object that twitters!). That’s a tricky idea for some people, but it’s at the core of building a smarter planet.
These are examples of how all of us have the ability to make our entire planet “smarter.” We just need to use sensors that operate individually to instrument the world around us, link together the information streams the sensors provide in a network, and then apply intelligence in the form of an analytics system that can recommend appropriate actions.
I look at my “smart home” and use of social networking tools for commuting as steps that I can take as an individual.
If enough of us take steps at the micro level, momentum will build. Smarter buidlings are coming as we think about structures differently: seeing homes not just as living spaces, but as living systems; seeing offices not just as static structures where work is done, but as manifestations of all the ways the world works.
Click to listen to podcast: Building a Smarter Planet – Patents
Manny Schecter, IBM Chief Patent Counsel told me that “patents are the currency of innovation.”
Approximately 150,000 U.S. patents are granted to investors each year and for the last 17 years, IBM has received more U.S. patents than any other company in the world. According to IFI Patent Intelligence, in 2009 IBM was issued 4,914 U.S. patents. So IBM is clearly a major player in the world of innovation.
Yet it’s still the case that some don’t know what IBM does. It’s clear based on numbers that IBM is an “innovative” company, sure, but what does IBM invent and why?
What I found out from speaking with Kathryn Guarini and John Gunnels, two IBMers with a number of IBM patents is that, believe it or not, inventors don’t want to spend their time reinventing the wheel to pad their portfolio, they’re looking toward innovation that matters (a company line which I understand better now that I’ve spoken with some true innovators). Guarini, director of Systems and Technology Development for IBM Systems and Technology Group says, “We want to innovate where there is real value. We don’t want to innovate everywhere, all the time.”
Mr. Gunnels is a research scientist in the area of high performance computing. He has worked on several projects and is named on multiple patents related to IBM’s Blue Gene Supercomputer which was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009. Blue Gene systems have helped map the human genome, investigate medical therapies, safeguard nuclear arsenals, simulate radioactive decay, simulate brain power, envision financial scenarios, predict weather and climate trends, and identify fossil fuels. And he told me that there have actually been cases where Blue Gene predicts the outcome of an experiment, which were only later verified with an actual experiment.
Several patents have been issued around Blue Gene in 2009, but consider another patent which IBM was issued this year:
U.S. Patent 7,612,655 – “Alarm System for Hearing Impaired Individuals Having Hearing Assistive Implanted Devices”
This patent describes a method for alerting profoundly deaf sleepers to danger, such as fire and carbon monoxide, or to circumstances such as a doorbell, phone call or wakeup alarm. The concept works best for deaf individuals who have cochlear implants. These people typically deactivate their implants when they bathe or sleep for reasons of comfort and safety. They do so by detaching a small device normally worn outside the ear, and which normally functions as a signal transmitter to an implanted component. During sleep or bathing activities, they typically can’t or won’t wear a device that vibrates, nor can they rely on flashing lights to catch their attention. The patented method enables the implanted component to begin buzzing abnormally or stay silent, depending on what occasion for which the user has programmed it to respond.
As an IBMer, it’s a source of job-related pride to see companies like mine investing in something that actually makes a difference for our company and for the world. “Innovation that matters”, not just a catchy slogan or corporate mantra. It is one of our company values. Something we, as IBMers, take pride in and use as inspiration everyday. And I think that the real thing to take away from all the reports on patents and patent leadership is this: a great number of these innovations being patented are helping to make the world safer, cleaner, more efficient and most notably, smarter; for people, societies, and for the world.
To read about more IBM innovations and their impact, see this article from IBM Research.
For all multimedia content around Smarter Planet, visit the Media Library.
For all multimedia content around Smarter Planet, visit the Media Library.
For all multimedia content around Smarter Planet, visit the Media Library.
For all multimedia content around Smarter Planet, visit the Media Library.
For all multimedia content around Smarter Planet, visit the Media Library.
For all multimedia content around Smarter Planet, visit the Media Library.
For all multimedia content around Smarter Planet, visit the Media Library.
