Posted by
Steve Hamm in
Intel’s purchase yesterday of security software maker McAfee, detailed in this News.com story, signals a shift in the tech industry’s view of how to better secure computers, networks, and software programs: Security has to be built in, rather than added on later. It’s the concept of “secure by design.”
At IBM, the secure-by-design concept extends to encompass our Smarter Planet agenda. These days, its not enough to secure the traditional computing infrastructure. You’ve got to protect all of the devices and networks that are now being used to monitor, manage, and analyze everything from smart electrical grids to health care systems. “All of the physical assets of the world are becoming digitized, instrumented, interconnected and intelligent,” says Kristin Lovejoy, head of IBM security strategy. “But the sad reality is that as people develop and design these new technologies they’re not thinking enough about the issue of security. These devices are so critical that if they’re unavailable or if they’re tampered with, it could have a significant negative impact on an individual or a large population.”
When security is an afterthought, it tends to be expensive and not that effective. Plus, organizations typically find out about a vulnerability after it has already been exploited by malicious software programs.
We believe that only by designing products to be secure can organizations gain the protection they need at a reasonable price. With that principle in mind, IBM has established what we call a secure engineering framework. It’s a set of specifications that we are beginning to use in all of our design processes, for hardware and software alike.
Now that the world’s critical infrastructure is being wired and networked, security is becoming more important than ever before. Business-as-usual in the tech industry isn’t good enough any more.
Posted by
Adam Christensen in
In less than a week, political and business leaders, experts and academics will descend on Shanghai for the next global Smarter Cities summit. As we’ve done in Berlin, and in New York City, our goal is to convene leaders representing all the systems in a city to surface the challenges and opportunities for charting the next phase of the world’s urban centers.
As the world’s largest city in one of the largest and fastest growing economies, Shanghai provides the perfect backdrop to explore the converging realities of massive urbanization and a scarcity of resources. It’s no coincidence that the summit is at the head end of the six-month long long Shanghai Expo. With the theme-appropriate “Better City, Better Life” urban sustainability will be a recurring theme throughout the Expo.
In support of the Smarter Cities summit, we’ll feature a number of city-centric posts, and during the event itself, June 2 and 3, we’ll share on the blog and on Twitter as much of the major insights stemming from the event as we can about the major themes of the conference: transportation, education, public safety, health care, water management and energy. Stay tuned, as they say.
In the meantime, spend some time exploring the interactive SmarterCity experience for a deeper IBM perspective on the city as a system of systems. Just click on the graphic below.
(for a non Flash version, go here).
Following is a guest post from Leendert van Bochoven, IBM’s NATO and European Defense Leader:
Within the next few days, Brussels-based Security & Defence Agenda (SDA) will be releasing a report (pdf) that makes recommendations to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) for broad policy changes to improve global security.
What makes this report so unusual is not the content itself; rather, it’s the source: The recommendations come from nearly 4,000 people from 124 countries and all walks of life who “jammed” for five days in February on global security challenges.
In the process these individuals made history. I was there. I saw it happen. I participated.
The occasion was the first ever global Security Jam, which used IBM jamming and advanced analytics technologies and services to successfully engage thousands of people in moderated on-line discussions over the Internet.
This was a “first” on many levels: It was the first time that civilians and military experts, including defence and security professionals, journalists, and representatives from governments, think-tanks, academia, and industry, had come together using this form of social media to discuss, debate and brainstorm on the changing nature of 21st century security. An idea born over a beer with Mike Ryan from the US Ambassy in Brussels. It was the first time that EU and NATO had supported such an open debate involving the international community – people beyond the “usual suspects” — on such a strategic and sensitive subject as our global security.
There were a tough set of issues to tackle, including crisis preparedness, cross-border cooperation, climate change, and cyber threats. These issues illustrate just how interconnected our planet has become. This interconnectedness affects geographic, organisational and institutional boundaries, as well as our concept of who we are and how we relate to one another. No greater symbol of this interconnectedness could have been that both EU and NATO supported this Security Jam.
I applaud NATO and the EU for supporting the Security Jam and for recognizing that new thinking, new levels of collaboration and greater civilian-military cooperation are needed to find viable solutions to global security challenges. Maybe this Security Jam should be turned into an annual online meeting of the minds, with the stature of “Davos” and the reach of “Facebook”, discussing smart ideas for dealing with today´s and tomorrow´s security challenges.
The Security Jam and the recommendations that followed are game-changing. But the full measure of success will be whether we can look back in a few years to see the realization and implementation of smart ideas that emerged from the Security Jam.
I, for one, am confident we will.
Leendert van Bochoven is IBM’s NATO and European Defense Leader.
By Peter Ward, IBM SMS for Life Project Manager, Tanzania
1. What was the aim of the project?
Stock-outs of malaria treatments at the health facility level in many sub-Saharan African countries have been a persistent problem for many years. A stock-out is the unavailability of medicine at the health facility. In Tanzania, 93 percent of the population are at risk for malaria infection. The number of malaria cases is estimated to be 11 million resulting into 60-80 thousand deaths per year or 220 deaths per day in Tanzania alone.
The goal of the SMS for Life pilot project was to develop a flexible and scalable solution to bring up-to-date visibility of anti-malarials within the Tanzanian Public Health Sector with a potential to reduce or eliminate stock-outs of five drugs (four dosage forms of ACTs and Quinine Injectable) in all health facilities in a pilot sample of three districts.
2. What was IBM’s involvement?
The concept was developed on an Extreme Blue internship programme with Novartis. IBM provided project management to the pilot project and also made LotusLive, IBM’s cloud-collaboration services, available to the global project team to ensure every member of the team was kept up to speed and remained in touch with one another on every detail of the weekly stock data, the updated locations of health facilities, the most current versions of documents and activities critical to the success of the program.
3. Pete, what was your personal involvement and observations on the ground?
I was the project manager from the initial 3.5-week recce across the three pilot districts in Tanzania in May 2009 until the delivery of the final report to the Minister of Health in April 2010. I participated in the recce, subsequently created the project plan, participated in delivering the end user education in Dar es Salaam and the 3 pilot districts, managed the work remotely through the 21-week pilot running period, and had heavy involvement in creating the final reports.
My personal observations are that this project is a simple yet effective way of addressing a previously intractable problem. The use of end user technology which appears simplistic is appropriate for the harsh environments found in sub-Saharan Africa, while the complex server/application technology that drives the solution remains hosted in the developed world. I anticipate that the success of the project will encourage a speedy rollout in Tanzania and also in other countries across the African continent where malaria is a problem. I also expect the solution to be applied to other similar requirements.
4. What were the results of the pilot?
The pilot delivered against three primary objectives:
A. The SMS for Life system provided visibility of accurate anti-malarial stock levels of the health facilities, and this visibility has supported the districts in better stock management and the elimination of stock-outs.
The SMS for Life pilot provided, for the first time ever, reliable weekly stock information on anti-malarials at the health facility level. This information was provided via the Internet or mobile phones and accessed by district management and project team staff. At the beginning of the pilot project, all three districts had high stock-out rates of one or more of the five medicines (Lindi Rural at 57 percent, Kigoma Rural at 93 percent and Ulanga at 87 percent). During the pilot, malaria medicine availability improved significantly in all three districts, such that at the end of 21 weeks, stock-out rates were reduced to zero percent in Lindi Rural, 47 percent in Kigoma Rural and 30 percent in Ulanga.
B. The SMS for Life application is a viable, easy-to-use system leveraging common everyday technology.
The project team successfully designed and implemented a complex data repository application system, with built-in automated workflow and error message handling in addition to on-line statistical analysis, graphing and stock reporting. The system is located in an industrial data centre used by the banking industry in London, UK, with guaranteed availability, backup and all the normal fire suppression, standby generators, multiple communications and multiple electricity sources required to ensure continuous availability. While hidden from users, the ease of access by the health care workers and NMCP and district management staff is demonstrated by system usage/data access statistics showing average access per user group of more than once per day. The pilot project collected 13,500 stock-level data points from 129 health facilities across three remote districts in Tanzania over 21 weeks utilizing the SMS for Life application.
C. The SMS for Life public-private partnership model is an effective organizational structure to identify, build and implement a solution to help resolve long-standing societal problems.
The SMS for Life pilot created a unique public-private partnership model that enabled the problem to be precisely identified, a technical solution to be designed, built, and implemented in three rural districts in Tanzania in less than one year. No formal budget, legal contracts, or MOUs were developed between any of the partners. The concept of creating a partnership from multiple public and private organisations, and assembling a very lean team combining all the expertise, skills and influence necessary to tackle a complex problem, has worked very well. Each partner committed their unique resources and covered their associated project costs, eliminating the need to source and manage budgets on a project level. This model also made it easier, faster and more efficient to obtain results, by passing the often lengthy and difficult approval processes for project funding allocation and transfer.
5. What are the implications for other projects going forward?
We recommend the following actions:
- Implement the SMS for Life solution in all districts of Tanzania
- Implement SMS for Life in other African or non-African countries that have a need to bring visibility to medicine stocks at the health facility and district levels, and eliminate/reduce stock-outs
- Encourage countries to use the SMS for Life solution to track other medicines of priority in their national environments
- Apply the SMS for Life solution to disease surveillance
- International bodies and governments should utilize the public-private partnership model that has been piloted, which harnesses the diverse skills and expertise across the public and private sectors, to tackle other societal problems.
In other words, the solution must be rolled out and will save lives across Africa.
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
“The point of cities is multiplicity of choice,” said Jane Jacobs, the champion of cities who penned the breakthrough 1961 critique of urban renewal, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. We think it’s a good idea to give a multiplicity of people who are interested in the future of cities opportunities to learn about it and do something about it. That’s why we’re conducting a virtual Smarter Cities event on Feb. 23 (10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern U.S. Time) as we mentioned here on this blog a few days ago.
This Smarter Cities phenomenon is really taking off. We’ve held major terrestrial events in Berlin and New York, and plan another in Shanghai this summer. We’ve also staged dozens of mini-events in cities throughout the world. So going online is an obvious next step. Anybody who wants to participate is welcome. Register on ibm.com.
The event will start off with a handful of speeches delivered by government and business leaders who are up to their elbows in making cities work better. They include Bev Perdue, governor of North Carolina, and Joseph Rigby, chairman of utility giant Pepco Holdings. Our own Bridget van Kralingen, IBM general manager, North America, will launch the event with an update on our Smarter Planet initiative. (One tidbit: A little more than a year after launching the initiative, we have 1200 partnerships with clients worldwide–a faster uptake than we expected.) Gov. Purdue will talk about a test project in Charlotte aimed at revolutionizing the way highways are built. Using a public-private partnership model, North Carolina is teaming up with developers who will not only perform the design and construction of the new highway sections, but will invest some of their own money, as well. If this approach works in Charlotte, Perdue plans on rolling it out across the state.
After a lunch break (you’re on your own for that), there will be breakout sessions focusing on education, public safety, transportation, government, energy, and healthcare. As somebody who attended university in Pittsburgh, I’m particularly interested in hearing from Dr. Daniel Martich, the chief medical information officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. UPMC is reinventing itself as a laboratory for innovations in healthcare technology and new approaches to delivering care.
For participants, there will be plenty of opportunities to weigh in. There will be a question-and-answer session after the major addresses and interactive discussions during each breakout panel. Participants will type their comments and questions on their computers.
Who knows, maybe the next Jane Jacobs will emerge out of one of these events. The pool of brainpower is certainly getting big enough to make that possible.
Posted by
Adam Christensen in
As readers of this blog will remember, over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time convening leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss the future of our cities. We started in Berlin in June, then, in November hosted another Smarter Cities forum in New York City. In between these major international sessions, we’ve been hosting dozens of local fora in cities around the world. We’ve had mayors, governors, CEO and a whole host of civic and federal officials participate in the conversations. In fact, we’ll be convening another large meeting in Shanghai in early June.
But, physical events are necessarily limiting in their access and participation. Thus, to address that issue, we are going to be hosting the first ever Smarter Cities Virtual Event on February 23. The event will allow anybody to participate live, online, in discussions addressing the weighty issues our cities face, including transportation, education, energy, public safety and more. This is not just a webcast of the same content. Rather, they will be interactive sessions probing deeply on these big topics.
I’ve included a sampling of the agenda below (more details can be found on the registration page on ibm.com). We’ll be sharing some major recaps from the event here on the blog next week. You can also follow along on Twitter @smarterplanet and the event hashtag (forthcoming). But if you are interested in participating in the conversation live, register now.
Here’s a sampling of the agenda:
Main tent:
- Bridget Van Kralingen, IBM
- North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue
- Joseph Rigby, President & CEO, Pepco Holdings
As in all of our Smarter Cities conferences, the “main tent” sessions are followed by interactive breakout sessions probing much deeper into the major systems that comprise a smarter city. The Virtual Smarter Cities Forum will host the following:
- Smarter Energy, moderated by Guido Bartels, IBM and Todd McGregor, PHI
- Smarter Transportation, moderated by Gerry Mooney, IBM; Pat McCrory, Moore & Van Allen, (and former Mayor of Charlotte, NC); and Bob Kingston, McCarran Airport, Las Vegas
- Smarter Government, moderated by Nicole Gardner, IBM; Barbara Ramsey, Oklahoma Employment Security Commission; and Don R. Edwards, Alameda County Social Services Agency
- Smarter Education, moderated by Mike King, IBM; J.L. Albert, Georgia State University; and Sharon P. Pitt, George Mason University
- Smarter Public Safety, moderated by George Cruser, IBM; Stephen Hollifield, City of Richmond Police; and Pat McCrory, McCrory & Co. (and former Mayor of Charlotte, NC)
- Smarter Healthcare, moderated by Patrick Boyle, IBM; Daniel Martich, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center; and Asif Ahmad, of Duke University Health System
We hope to “see” you next week.
By 2050, nearly three quarters of our planet’s population will live in cities. Public safety will be a key factor in determining which city they choose, as well as determining the economic health of the city. IBM is working with clients and municipalities to help make cities smarter and safer. It helped New York reduce its crime by 27% using real-time data integrated data analysis, and helped Singapore significantly reduce traffic congestion. Learn more about how IBM is helping make public safety smarter.
Posted by
George Faulkner in
As you may have noticed from the last post, IBM’s Sam Palmisano visited the Chatham House stage in London today having delivered a speech titled ‘Welcome to the Decade of Smart.’ Throughout tonight (and over the coming days) we will be posting content and links to images and video from the event here, as they become available.
From the post-event materials being distributed:
On January 12, 2010, Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officers, addressed business and civic leaders at Chatham House in London. In his remarks, he described how forward-thinking leaders in business, government and civil society around the world are capturing the potential of smarter systems to achieve economic growth, near-term efficiency, sustainable development and societal progress.
Links:
Launch a video of the speech: Sam Palmisano at Chatham House
Launch a video of the Q&A from Chatham House: Q&A from Chatham House
Today, Steve Lohr of the New York Times published a brief article about the speech that takes a look at the past year of Smarter Planet work from IBM.
Paul Glader of the Wall Street Journal published an article today as well that examines aspects of IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative.
11:16
Posted by
Adam Christensen in
Buildings that know when they need to be fixed before something breaks; sensors that tell the fire department details of a fire before they receive the emergency phone call; smart water and sewage systems that filter and recycle water. . . . .
It’s that time of year here at IBM – when we look to the future and make five predictions of technological trends that will change the way we live in the next five years. Given the current attention to making our cities smarter, for this year’s we have focused on five innovations that will change our cities in the next five years.
Importantly, the list is intended to serve as a discussion point to discuss – and debate – the prospects for our cities and how progress can be made.
If there’s one common thread in all of the advances we see in the coming years, it’s the ability to monitor our environment with sensors and the application of analytics – complex algorithms baked into software – to make decisions based on all of that data. In reality, it’s what we’ve been talking about for the past year here on this blog, but we are just now beginning to see these efforts implemented at the city level to really change how cities work.
Analytics will predict the patterns of how diseases will spread, will enable buildings to evaluate the relationships between their systems and provide real-time information to management, will enable city smart grids to draw on clean energy during peak and off peak hours, find water leaks and more efficient ways to move water, and predict emergencies before they happen to limit their impact.
While these are predictions for the future, in each case the innovation is rooted in work we are just beginning to see pop up with some of our city clients or in our labs today. We’ll spend some time over the next few weeks to go deeper into each one of these topics, sharing what’s happening now and exploring opportunities for the future.
But in the meantime, and without further ado, below is this year’s “Next 5 in 5”:
- Cities will have healthier immune systems
Given their population density, cities will remain hotbeds of communicable diseases. But in the future, public health officials will know precisely when, where and how diseases are spreading – even which neighborhoods will be affected next. Scientists will give city officials, hospitals, schools and workplaces the tools to better detect, track, prepare for and prevent infections, such as the H1N1 virus or seasonal influenza. We will see a “health Internet” emerge, where anonymous medical information, contained in electronic health records, will be securely shared to curtail the spread of disease and keep people healthier. - City buildings will sense and respond like living organisms
As people move into city buildings at record rates, buildings will be built smartly. Today, many of the systems that constitute a building – heat, water, sewage, electricity, etc. – are managed independently. In the future, the technology that manages facilities will operate like a living organism that can sense and respond quickly, in order to protect citizens, save resources and reduce carbon emissions. Thousands of sensors inside buildings will monitor everything from motion and temperature to humidity, occupancy and light. The building won’t just coexist with nature – it will harness it. This system will enable repairs before something breaks, emergency units to respond quickly with the necessary resources, and consumers and business owners to monitor their energy consumption and carbon emission in real-time and take action to reduce them. Some buildings are already showing signs of intelligence by reducing energy use, improving operational efficiency, and improving comfort and safety for occupants. - Cars and city buses will run on empty
For the first time, the “E” on gas gauges will mean “enough.” Increasingly, cars and city buses no longer will rely on fossil fuels. Vehicles will begin to run on new battery technology that won’t need to be recharged for days or months at a time, depending on how often you drive. IBM scientists and partners are working to design new batteries that will make it possible for electric vehicles to travel 300 to 500 miles on a single charge, up from 50 to 100 miles currently. Also, smart grids in cities could enable cars to be charged in public places and use renewable energy, such as wind power, for charging so they no longer rely on coal-powered plants. This will lower emissions as well as minimize noise pollution. (see the Battery 500 and Bornholm electric vehicle posts for hints at what is to come) - Smarter systems will quench cities’ thirst for water and save energy
Today, one in five people lack access to safe drinking water, and municipalities lose an alarming amount of precious water — up to 50 percent through leaky infrastructure. On top of that, human demand for water is expected to increase sixfold in the next 50 years. To deal with this challenge, cities will install smarter water systems to reduce water waste by up to 50 percent. Cities also will install smart sewer systems that not only prevent run-off pollution in rivers and lakes, but purify water to make it drinkable. Advanced water purification technologies will help cities recycle and reuse water locally, reducing energy used to transport water by up to 20 percent. Interactive meters and sensors will be integrated into water and energy systems, providing you with real time, accurate information about your water consumption so you will be able to make better decisions about how and when you use this valuable resource. - Cities will respond to a crisis — even before receiving an emergency phone call
Cities will be able to reduce and even prevent emergencies, such as crime and disasters. Law enforcement agencies will turn to mathematics and analytics to analyze the right information at the right time, so that public servants can take proactive measures to head off crime. Fire departments will begin using software to potentially prevent fires from happening in the first place. Even today, scientists are beginning to look at past fires, smoke patterns and climate fluctuations to developing models that predict wildfires, to prevent fires and speed public evacuations when they happen.
Posted by
Adam Christensen in
With Day 2 of the NYC Smarter Cities Summit now getting underway, we move to breakout sessions in the morning (Healthcare, Public Safety, Education, Transportation, Government Services and Energy & Utilities). For background on each, I’d recommend looking at the respective “Categories” to the right of this page and perusing through the Smarter Planet pages on ibm.com.
And just like yesterday, many will be Tweeting through the day. Follow along below and join in by following @smarterplanet and tagging your tweets with #smartercity.
