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by Mark Cleverley, IBM director of public safety
As we enter the New Year, happily, some things stay the same. Namely, IBM’s focus on helping cities become smarter and safer. IBM just announced how it is working with the Rochester and Las Vegas police departments to better forecast crime “hot spots” and proactively allocate resources accordingly. Continue Reading »
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When Chris and Carolyn Clemans moved 2 1/2 years ago from a suburb of Syracuse, New York, to the city’s gritty Near West Side, they were among the first urban pioneers to join an effort to revitalize one of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Today, a dozen formerly rundown homes in the vicinity have been fixed up by new owners and the neighborhood seems to be on its way to a surprising comeback.
The Clemans run a custom cabinetry business, Cabinet Fabrication Group, in a small downtown factory within walking distance of their home–so they’re betting their future on Syracuse. There are several factors in the Near West Side’s change of fortunes, but the key one, according to Chris, is that the new residents have changed the culture of the neighborhood. “Criminals are more comfortable operating in an area where people tolerate them. We don’t tolerate them,” he says.
The unwillingness of residents to accept criminal or even nuisance behavior is one of the key factors in determining whether an urban neighborhood can be stabilized or make a comeback, according to research conducted by a team of five IBMers who performed a deep analysis of Syracuse’s housing vacancy issues this fall. The team is part of IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge program–where the company sends teams to help cities worldwide assess and solve some of their most challenging problems. The Syracuse team recently presented a report laying out their findings and recommendations to municipal leaders. Their message: Armed with accurate information that correlates causes and effects, the city can craft successful strategies for revitalizing neighborhoods.
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Some argue that in this era of austerity, the US government can no longer afford to launch bold new programs aimed at making the country work better. Not so. But it’s true that big projects have to be approached differently. These days, government needs to work collaboratively with businesses, universities and community organizations to get big stuff done and boost the dynamism of the US economy.
Today, IBM is convening a conference, US Competitiveness: the Next 100 Years, to generate ideas for rekindling America’s competitiveness in the years ahead. For live blogging from the event, check in between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Please Tweet to #uscompetes.
The latest:
4:45 p.m. Close – Jonathan Fanton, Roosevelt House Fellow:
“A vision of a fair, just and humane society will advance our economic gains, if we can achieve it.”
We can’t count on government alone or industries to carry the burden of our reinvention.
We’re at an inflection point. All of us need to think differently We need to take responsibility for coming up with fresh thoughts for making our economy more vital.
“It’s individual initiative we have to find ways to unleash.”
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By Jennifer Bélissent
Analyst
Forrester Research
Last week, I attended IBM’s Smarter City Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the fourth in a series of global events highlighting the opportunities for cities to improve their systems, and themselves as a “system of systems.” This event felt different from the previous summit I had attended in Shanghai. Obvious political and cultural differences aside (not to dismiss them as they were significant), the big difference I observed here was that the sessions were more real. And, I don’t mean that as a slight on the Shanghai event. In Shanghai, the focus was on creating the blueprints for smart cities. In Rio, we had moved from blueprints to proof points. (Yes, you can quote that… it is mine.) Mayors from cities across Latin America and some from even farther came to share their experiences.
For example, representatives from Singapore, London and Lima shared the challenges and successes of implementing new transportation initiatives. Singapore deals with a growing population on an island, meaning there is no opportunity for sprawl and therefore “private cars are no longer an option.” As a result, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) has a goal that 70% of all circulation or “daily trips” will be by public transport. They are almost there. The strategy was twofold. LTA makes it really expensive to drive a private car: cars are taxed at 120% and the ownership license distributed via auction was $60,000 in the latest round. Not to mention the congestion-based tolling system when you actually do use your car. On the other hand, LTA has improved the experience of public transportation through an integrate transport system, predictive arrival times, and notification of arrivals among other things.
Continued on the Forrester blog, where this post was originally published.
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- Analytics
- business analytics
- Government Services
- Inventions
- Leadership
- new intelligence
- Smarter Buildings
- Smarter Cities
- Smarter Industries
- Smarter Planet
- Smarter Public Safety
- Smarter Systems
- Smarter Traffic
- Smarter Transportation
- Smarter Utilities
- Smarter Water
- Smarter Water Management
- Smarter Work
- sustainability
- urban planning
Rio De Janeiro is a bustling metropolis in a booming country–and, increasingly, an example of how government and business leaders can cooperate to make cities work better. Join the live blog today and tomorrow for coverage of speeches, panels and hallway discussions.
Here’s Sam Palmisano’s speech:
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By Elly Keinan
General Manager
IBM Latin America
(Editor’s note: Keinan will be one of the hosts of IBM’s two-day Smarter Cities conference in Rio de Janeiro this week. Follow live blogging from the event on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10.)
A year and a half ago, torrential rains in Rio de Janeiro caused floods and landslides that brought much of the city to a standstill and killed more than 100 residents. Eleven inches of rain beat down in a 24-hour period. In a city with a history of tropical rainstorms and flooding, Brazilians demanded to know why the authorities were not better prepared.
Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, vowed that such a disaster would not happen again. He moved decisively to bolster the city’s defenses against weather-related disruptions. Today, the city has a new state-of-the art intelligent operations center where managers monitor dozen of screens for data concerning weather, traffic, police, medical services, and other city departments on a real-time basis and anticipate looming problems—putting defenses in place to diminish their impact.
The mayor’s actions demonstrate convincingly how bold leaders can harness the power of sophisticated technologies to transform the way a city operates—and make life better for their constituents. The technology underpinning the Rio Operations Center, which was set up by IBM consultants and software architects, has matured since the center went live almost a year ago. Now, this kind of management system is becoming available to cities of all sizes—including via a cloud computing offering, which makes it faster to deploy.
These advances represent an important moment in the evolution of cities.
18:00
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In early 2009, bushfires fanned by winds gusting to 83 miles per hour raced across the landscape north of Melbourne, Australia, killing 173 people and destroying 3,500 structures. It was estimated that the amount of energy released during the firestorm was equivalent to the energy that would be released by 1,500 World War II-era atomic bombs.
The bushfires, together with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, quakes in Haiti and New Zealand, the New Orleans flood and the volcanic eruption in Iceland, remind us of the terribly destructive power of nature. The fires were the catalyst that launched IBMers in Australia into focusing on the role that information technology can play in helping to respond to and mitigate natural disasters. Climate change amplifies natural phenomena, and the increased concentration of people in urban areas makes society ever more vulnerable. “These major disasters intersect with population density and the interconnectedness of economies and business,” says Glenn Wightwick, director of IBM R&D Australia. “Society has to become more resilient.”
Societal resilience has become one of the pillars of the research agenda for IBM R&D Australia, the newest of IBM’s global research labs, which will be officially inaugurated on Friday. It’s also the theme of The IBM Research colloquium that the lab is hosting tomorrow for more than 100 guests in Melbourne. That confab is part of an IBM Centennial program designed to convene thought leaders – including leading researchers and scientists, academics, leaders of industries, public policy makers and key IBM clients — for a series of talks and panel discussions on transformational technologies and their potential impact on the world.
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By Robert Atkinson
President
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Robert Atkinson, president of the non-partisan public policy think-tank ITIF, today moderated a panel of experts on emerging technologies in the fields of health care, transportation and energy at IBM’s Frontiers of IT Capitol Hill briefing.
Here’s the Washington Post’s Post Tech blog curtain-raiser on the event.
Recently considerable attention has been drawn to the emergence of “Big Data”—large scale data sets that businesses are using to unlock new value using today’s computing and communications power. As a McKinsey Global Institute study recently showed, Big Data offers a wide range of commercial opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy for the United States. To take one example, the authors estimate that better use of big data in health care could generate an additional $300 billion in long-term value, with approximately two-thirds of that coming from a direct reduction in national health care expenditures.
The use of Big Data should not be confined to just the private sector; data offers incredible new opportunities to the public sector as well. Policymakers have the opportunity to use Big Data to improve government in areas such as public safety, public health, public utilities and public transportation. ITIF has discussed many of these opportunities before.
Consider the following:
- Electric power utilities can use data analytics and smart meters to better manage resources and avoid blackouts,
- Food inspectors can use data to better track meat and produce safety from farm to fork ,
- Public health officials can use health data to detect infectious disease outbreaks,
- Regulators can track pharmaceutical and medical device safety and effectiveness through better data analytics,
- Police departments can use data analytics to target crime hotspots and prevent crime waves,
- Public utilities can use sensors to collect data on water and sewer usage to detect leaks and reduce water consumption,
- First responders can use sensors, GPS, cameras and better communication systems to let police and fire fighters better protect citizens when responding to emergencies, and
- State departments of transportation can use data to reduce traffic, more efficiently deploy resources, and implement congestion pricing systems
When the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck Japan last March, the disaster killed more than 15,000 people and caused immeasurable property damage. It also seriously damaged the reputation of science. The Japanese people had been assured by scientists that their nuclear reactors were safe and that they were well protected from the threat of tsunamis.
IBM Research-Tokyo has taken on the mission of helping to better understand and react to natural disasters. But that’s not all. “In addition to responding to the disaster, one of our biggest concerns is repairing the image of science,” says Norishige Morimoto, director of the Tokyo lab. “We want to show people that science and technology aren’t just for improving efficiency and corporate profits. They can and should contribute to the quality of life and to society.”
Morimoto, who has been the lab director since 2009, uses the term “resilient society” to describe the broader benefits that science can deliver through better access to data and understanding of data, and sophisticated analysis that can lead to better decision making at the time of the emergency. Innovation for a Resilient Society is the theme of the IBM Research Colloquium that the lab is conducting today at Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. The Colloquium is an IBM Centennial program designed to convene at IBM Research labs thought leaders – including leading researchers and scientists, academics, public policy makers and key IBM clients — for a series of talks and panel discussions on future, transformative technologies and platforms and their potential impact on the world. In addition to Morimoto, leading thinkers from IBM, academia and industry will speak to an audience of more than 100 leaders in society about the future of space exploration, healthcare, transportation and society.
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Two and a half years ago, when IBM launched its Smarter Planet strategy, it calculated that the move would expand its available market by 40%. Suddenly, the company was developing new technology-based solutions capable of helping to transform the way complex systems, large organizations, industries, cities and even whole societies work. But how do you measure the impact of this kind of activity?
Not by traditional methods that are commonly used in the tech industry. They measure the return on investment in new technology products and services–mostly operational efficiencies within the IT department and productivity gains throughout the business.
So what’s needed is a new way of thinking about the impact of technology–going beyond traditional return on investment, commonly called ROI. Tech market research consulting firm Forrester Consulting and IBM have been working together for nearly two years on a new theory and methodology for evaluating the potential gains from Smarter Planet-type projects–an approach they call Expanded Value for Smarter Planet. “One of the important elements of Smarter Planet is you’re looking at the impact of investments on a whole system. You’re looking not just at internal operational improvements but at the effect on the company’s brand, at strategic advantages it brings and even at the impact on society,” says Jon Erickson, an a principal consultant with Forrester Consulting.
The first results of this work are coming out now, in form of three reports. They include two case studies, one about law enforcement and the other about healthcare. An overview, Measuring the Total Economic Impact of IBM Smarter Planet Solutions, will be published soon.
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This is the second in a series of three essays about the potential payoff from applying Smarter Planet thinking to businesses. The first essay can be found here. The third will be published on July 29.
