Today, IBM announced the 33 cities that will participate this year in its Smarter Cities Challenge grant program. This marks the second year in a three-year, $50 million, 100-city initiative. IBM sends five- or six-person teams of experts in a range of disciplines to help cities formulate strategies for improving the quality of life for their citizens.

By now, IBM has amassed a wealth of knowledge about how to help cities get started on transformational projects. Last year, the company engaged with 25 cities around the world, including St. Louis in the United States, Glasgow in the United Kingdom, Chiang Mai in Thailand and Johannesburg in South Africa. The previous year, they ran test programs in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Katowice, Poland; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Chengdu, China; and elsewhere. The themes of the projects ranged from education, transportation and to public safety to energy and sustainable economic development. Here’s a post on the Citizen IBM blog from Stephen Mandel, the mayor of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, about the engagement there.

After each engagement, IBM’s Corporate Citizenship team identifies lessons learned. The exercise is partly aimed at improving the program itself, but the team also gleans insights that could help any leader in any city launch an initiative aimed at fundamentally transforming an aspect of how the city works. Here are some of the most critical lessons for leaders:

Be Bold–Even Audacious. If you don’t set a high bar and really challenge yourselves, the progress you make will be marginal at best.

The United Kingdom, for instance, has set a target of halving carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 2025—with a progress report due in 2014. Glasgow, a Scottish industrial city, will require significant improvements in energy conservation to meet the overall goals. But, at the same time, the city has a high ratio of poor people who suffer from what city leaders call “fuel poverty.” Nearly 35% of Glasgow households can’t afford to heat their homes properly. The goal is to address both problems with the same initiative. For starters, the city is paying for a fuel subsidy program for poor people using the proceeds from clean energy projects.

Think Differently. Be willing to try new ways of doing things. Just being more efficient with conventional approaches, even those that worked well in the past, won’t work best now.

Antofagasta, Chile, is a thriving port city in the country’s arid mining region, but it lacks some of the quality-of-life amenities befitting a city of its size and importance. The city leaders decided to take an unusual tactic: Make the city greener, literally, by irrigating parks and open spaces. Yet the dry climate made that goal particularly challenging. The IBM team crafted a set of proposals designed to get the most out of the limited supply of water.

Pick a Target That’s a Shared Priority. To get something difficult done, it will have to be at or near the top of the priority lists of all of the participants. Everybody involved has to pull together or the group will be pulled apart.

The political leaders in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and Charlotte, the county seat, invited municipal leaders from throughout the county to come together and agree on a project they could take on together. The theme they settled on, integrated regional capital planning, may not seem sexy, but, in a state where local government power is dispersed, it’s a necessary step for getting big things done.

Partner with Businesses and Non-profits. It’s important for city governments to engage with other actors in society, including universities and other non-profits, business organizations and individual businesses. Also, the earlier you get all the stakeholders involved, the better.

In Philadelphia, the Digital On-Ramps Initiative is aimed at preparing residents to work and thrive in the 21^st century economy. The initiative is being planned and managed by a consortium of institutions, including city departments, Drexel University, and a handful of civic groups, including the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, which is made up of representatives from government, business and neighborhood groups.

Encourage Citizen Involvement. Citizens can provide valuable insights into the most effective ways to improve the quality of life in their city. In this social networking era, it’s even more crucial to engage with citizens, and, thanks to all of the new technology tools that are available, it’s easier to do so.

Helsinki, Finland, faces social shifts resulting from an aging native population combined with immigration from Eastern European countries. It aims to open its data to the public, but needs to identify the most effective ways for communicating with a changing citizenry. The IBM team met with a group of citizens gathered at a local university and solicited ideas for open-data applications that would appeal to the people of Helsinki.

Understand the Value of Data. Evidence-based decision making really works. You can do things smarter and better, also more efficiently and more quickly.

In Syracuse, New York, a former industrial center with a sizable housing vacancy problem, city leaders realized that gathering and analyzing data is crucial to identifying which troubled neighborhoods have the highest potential for turnarounds. That way they could focus resources on them. A close look at the data showed—perhaps counter-intuitively—that neighborhoods with a high rate of calls to the police about drug use and loud disturbances have a high potential for being saved. It means the residents care enough to complain.

Invest for the Future. Sure, money is tight, but cities must be prepared to invest up front for long term benefits.

Chengdu, China, has laid out a five-year plan for investing in cloud computing resources to support its many Intelligent Chengdu initiatives. Chicago, Illinois, plans to invest in creating five new science and technology-focused schools, which combine high school and community college, in partnerships with IBM and four other corporations. The city’s leaders understand that they have to invest in programs that will take years to deliver results. They think it’s vital to creating the skilled workforce that’s necessary to sustain a dynamic economy.

Take Action Immediately: The research and final report aren’t of much value if cities don’t take action based on them. These can be small steps: reallocation of funds, new data gathered, a working group set up or a staff position created. The most important thing is to keep the process moving.

A number of the cities were quick to implement some of IBM’s recommendations. For instance, Mecklenberg County, North Carolina, has signed agreements with all its municipalities to develop a consolidated capital budget planning process. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is developing a program for helping residents to continue or resume their educations. And Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, analyzes traffic data more rigorously to improve road safety.

For the complete report, click here.

Technorati Tags: IBM Smarter Cities Challenge

Six months ago, the city of Nairobi, Kenya, was rocked by an explosion that left over 100 people dead. The cause: residents had scooped oil from a broken pipeline, hoping to later sell the product on the black market. The oil accidentally ignited, setting off the explosion.

The city was sent into turmoil. A power outage hindered efforts to communicate and rescue victims. Traffic was backed up, making rescue efforts even more difficult as emergency medical personnel battled against time to get to the victims. The water supply in the surrounding neighborhoods dwindled to a trickle as fire fighters used up the last drops of the resource to put out the fire.

The explosion and its aftermath show the vulnerabilities of cities when confronted with major disasters. But the situation didn’t have to be so bad. If Nairobi had had a system for managing disasters some of the loss of life and property could have been prevented.

Rio de Janeiro shows the way. The Brazilian city teamed with IBM to create an intelligent operations center, which serves as a model for how cities can improve management of their critical services. The IOC coordinates the activities of more than 30 municipal and state departments plus private utility and transportation companies. “You can imagine the impact that using a city-wide intelligence system would have had on the day of the Nairobi explosion. In seconds, city officials would have known exactly how to respond to the disaster and lives would have been saved” says Tony Mwai, country general manager, IBM East Africa.

Mwai led a roundtable discussion of government services in Africa in Nairobi on October 6, 2011. A white paper summarizing the takeaways from the conference,  A Vision of A Smarter City: How Nairobi Can Lead the Way into a Prosperous and Sustainable Future, was published today.

As Nairobi seeks to enhance its image as one of Africa’s most attractive business hubs, it continues to face the dual challenge of unprecedented population growth and over-stretched infrastructure. The doubling of the city’s population in the next ten years will introduce new challenges – chief among them the need for a streamlined response to safety and security issues.

Many gains have been made. For instance, car-jackings in the city have dropped by half due to more effective policing. Yet one of Nairobi’s biggest headaches remains its public safety record. With the increasing population, public safety concerns have grown as resources are simply too over-stretched to meet rising demand.

In Nairobi, residents have grown accustomed to 90% of all calls to emergency services going unanswered. In a city where the wealthy are able to buy their security by investing in electric fences and high-tech alarm systems, the poor are often at the mercy of thugs who prey on them.  Nairobi is now looking to technology to resolve its security issues.

A lot could be done without spending a tremendous amount of money. For instance, private companies have already covered over 90% of the city with cameras that are used to pinpoint security black spots and reduce crime. But because none of these private firms share these resources with each other, or allow that information to be viewed by the government, the impact of these impressive investments is limited.

The white paper suggests that bringing these two groups together by deploying a city-wide video surveillance system would allow all stakeholders to harness this vast network of cameras to the good of the city. These pieces of infrastructure could be instrumented to produce valuable data that can be used as intelligence to help make better public safety management decisions in real time.

In addition, by enhancing the use of analytics solutions to manage events like the Sinai fire, public safety officials could bring together vast amounts of relevant information to protect the public’s safety.

The Rio initiative is already capturing the imagination of Kenya’s government. Officials envision a future city that will be able to better handle disasters like Sinai–speeding response and saving lives.. “We look to Rio as the future we want, a city where technology allows public safety to be more accessible to residents,” said Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: Anthony Mwai, Bitange Ndemo, IBM, Kui Kinyanjui, Rio Intelligent Operations Center

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.

The advanced software the will enable the cities to better identify incident pattern, to understand linkages between apparently isolated pieces of information, and to mine, share and extract intelligence from critical data in order to improve police prevention, response and investigation.

Rochester and Las Vegas join cities like New York; Memphis; Edmonton, Ca.;and many others as places where safety and security for citizens and businesses are being improved through new technologies, while preserving government’s scarce budget resources. In many ways, these smaller cities often need to be more innovative with technology as they work under tighter resource constraints.

And, despite these constraints, crime rates in the US are dropping – and I’d like to think that technology has played a significant role in that. According to the FBI’s Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report (released Dec. 19) crime rates within the first six months of 2011 were down compared to the same period of 2010:

• Violent crimes reported fell by 6.4%
• Arson offenses down by 8.6%
• Motor vehicle theft fell 5%

For communities to continue to see an increase in public safety, we’re going to have to prioritize. Recently I wrote an article that appeared in Contingency Today that highlights what I believe with be the top three priorities for public safety agencies for 2012. In short, I said that integration, analytics and the use of technology to act as “force multipliers” and to battle shrinking budgets will be key factors. I’m glad to see that Rochester and Las Vegas are proving me right.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The team’s core insight relates to an observation that author Malcolm Gladwell made in his 2000 bestseller, The Tipping Point. Gladwell cited a phenomenon he called the Broken Windows Theory: “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a a signal that anything goes.”

In Syracuse, a crucial indicator was the frequency with with residents of economically distressed neighborhoods call police to report drug-related activities. If they don’t call, the neighborhood is likely on a slippery slope. But, “when somebody calls to complain, the police respond and make arrests. It means the neighbors care,” says Jing Shyr, a distinguished engineer at IBM who was on the Smarter Cities Challenge team.

Overall, Syracuse doesn’t have an especially bad housing vacancy rate–just 4.6%. But that’s misleading. When you drill down and look at individual neighborhoods you see that several of them have vacancy rates topping 10% and others, on the bubble, have rates between 5% and 10%.  Rates that high are strong signals that a neighborhood is in trouble and, left alone, could get a lot worse.

Shyr and her colleagues examined vast amounts of information about crime and police activity, real estate trends, poverty rates and other socioeconomic indicators for Syracuse’s 32 neighborhoods. They found some correlations between socioeconomic indicators and vacancy rates that surprised them. For example, in neighborhoods where the male unemployment rate was lower than the rate for women, vacancies typically weren’t that bad.  Digging deeper, the team found that lower-income men and women frequently compete for the same jobs. In neighborhoods where many woman have jobs, a lot of men are idle–which can lead to drug use and crime.

Before the IBM team performed its analysis, Syracuse leaders had strong impressions about what’s wrong with their most troubled neighborhoods, but they didn’t know for sure. Now, armed with more detailed information about causes and effects, they can craft responses with a higher likelihood of success.  Also, based on data trends, they can predict when a neighborhood is about to go down hill, and act proactively to stabilize the situation. “You’re using data to help the people in the community fix their community,” says Shyr. “You can help them reach a consensus. It’s no longer about who shouts louder. They have a mathematical model that helps them do more scientific decision making.”
Like the Clemans, Shyr now has a strong desire to help turn around Syracuse. She has no plans to move to one of its impoverished neighborhoods, as they did. But she’s willing to do statistical analysis work for  the city on a volunteer basis. She says: “I said, ‘Call me. I’ll help out.’”

Here’s a related blog post by Leslie Plant, one of the IBMers on the Challenge team in Syracuse.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Syracuse

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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The Start: 2:00 PM

Welcome – Jennifer J. Raab, President Hunter College:

She points out that the Roosevelt House is an apt place to hold a competitiveness event. 70 years ago the US was struggling with the Great Depression and IBM was struggling to stay in business. They came together to create Social Security—the biggest accounting application of all time. Ultimately, it became the foundation for economic security for American citizens. The idea for Social Security was hatched here when FDR met with Frances Perkins, later his secretary of labor, when he was president elect in early 1933.

She says there are no more important public private partnerships than those that support public education. At Hunter College, $5000 a year in tuition will buy you a world-class education. “We’re training the next generation of America’s workforce and applying those skills to society and business.” We can’t boost our economy without creating qualified employees for the workforce.

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2:45 PM

Keynote – Bridget van Kralingen, IBM General Manager, N. America:

Our theme today is the importance of public-private partnerships in helping to restore America’s global competitiveness.

It’s needed to be the catalyst for change and innovation.

There are some great examples of public-private partnerships that helped transform society. Social Security didn’t just build a safety net. It also gave people confidence in the ability and willingness of US businesses to play a constructive role in society.

The US space program, another public-private partnership spawned a number of industries.

We believe that PPPs can play the same important role today.

We have several challenges. Economic. BRIC growth has sustained and 115 countries in the world are growing faster than the US. Our competitive environment. We talk about creating jobs. “I’d argue that if you create skills, you create jobs. Skills create jobs.” The US now ranks 7^th among the OECD countries in spending on R&D—down from No. 1.

“We have a couple of dysfunctional behaviors. The recession has led to a lot of grinding and short term thinking, which works against innovation.”

“We have to create the future, not just focusing on fixing the symptoms today.”

There are great current examples of public private partnerships.

One example is a partnership of IBM and New York City. We’re creating a technical high school in Brooklyn, with two extra years of schooling. They’ll earn an associates degree. We’re in the process of announcing a similar program with the city of Chicago.

We’re also doing a partnership with New York State—investing with the state and other companies to create the next generations of chip technology.

“We put our money where our mouth is.”

We can use these partnership to drive growth and regain the US competitiveness that we need.

——

The Context:

Here’s van Kralingen’s post on the A Smarter Planet Blog.

———

3 p.m. PM

Keynote – Robert Steel, Deputy Mayor, NYC

The good news is New York City is growing. Most US cities are not growing. We’ll add 1 million people in the coming decades.

We launched Plan NYC in 2007. Mayor Michael Bloomberg laid out wherewe want New York to be over the next decade. The goal is to create a sustainable city.

We have 3.7 million jobs. Health care, finance, retail and business services are the four largest categories.

Unemployment is still unacceptably high, though. We don’t want to live in a city with high unemployment. The headline number is 8.6% but it actually understates the problem. For men of color in the Bronx, the unemployment rate is probably 40%. That’s unacceptable.

Also, unemployment is longer term than in past recessions.

Jobs and innovation are the key themes for economic development.

There are four pillars of economic vitality in New York. 1) Improve the quality of life in the city. 2) Create a pro business environment. 3) Invest in the future. 4) Innovation and economic competitiveness are key.

A good example of a public-private partnership is the High Line, a former elevated rail line that has been converted to a park—which has stimulated a lot of economic development. The city invested $120 million. There’s $75 million of private money. A lot of buildings are being constructed and remodeled. Thirty buildings are done or on the drawing boards. “We look for situations where public money encourages private money.”

Concerning talent: After the financial crisis the economic development corp. in the city surveyed employers to find out the skills that would be needed for the future. The answer was science and technology. Our R&D per capita is too low. So our of this came the idea of trying to turn NYC into a new Silicon Valley. This is the Applied Sciences NYC program. We had seven submissions from a total of 17 academic institutions.

We give advice, real estate and up to $100 million in funding What do we get for it? The range of proposals goes up to a 2-million square foot campus and $2.5 billion in investment.

“This is a big idea. It’s about innovation, thinking ahead and planning. It’s about thinking ahead and changing the nature of the city’s economy.”

————–

The Context: Robert Steel talks about the Applied Sciences NYC initiative, a public-private partnership aimed at creating a larger pool of people with technical skills in New York City.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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3:30 PM

Panel – New Thinking on Public/Private Partnerships

Moderator: Stan Litow, IBM vice president for corporate social responsibility, asks about entrepreneurialism and education

Participants:

John Seely Brown – Author

No skills last that long. We have to create a disposition to learn. You have to connect to learn, and you have to learn continually. “The half life of skills today has gone down to about five years.”

In the past, people defined themselves only by what they created themselves. Today, the kids are saying: ‘I am what I create, what I share, and what other people build on.’

Kathryn Wylde –CEO,  Partnership for New York City

Ronald Reagan popularized the concepts of public private partnerships. He understood that it wasn’t about business taking over government responsibilities but investing around government priorities.

We’re working with the business community to create early state investment funds. It’s a stream of activity, not one offs. We have set up technology media labs. We have startup incubation labs. We work in partnership with the city’s economic development corporation.

Robert Steel – Deputy Mayor, Economic Development, NYC

We can’t develop a clear vision of that a new science and engineering university in the city should be. We need ideas from organizations that know how to do this.

Some of the institutions are making joint submissions, and some of them chose corporations to be part of their submissions. IBM is one.

“We had a dating service for these guys to come together.”

Expect an announcement in January.

Bridget van Kralingen – IBM, General Manager, North America

You have to keep changing your business models and operating models. We’ve gone through significant changes. We are going much broader with the ecosystem of companies we partner with, and many of them are small companies and innovative startups. We have an entrepreneurships program where we’re helping more than 1000 startups develop their offerings and their business capabilities. We’ve extended it to a program with cities worldwide, called The Smarter Cities Challenge. We do a little project with each of them. We identify innovations and improvements. We offer the skills to build, produce and deliver.

John Seely Brown

We have to reinvent the notion of the land grant college which helped build the US economy in the 20^th Center.

You need to have a dialogue between the universities and the ecosystem of innovation around them. It’s not one way—with all the ideas coming from the university and then being developed out in the economy.

In the Applied Science NYC project, where more than one dozen universities are making proposals for a new science and engineering university in New York, every participant will be a winner. They’re all transforming their thinking through this project.

Robert Steel

“None of us should go to sleep tonight not worrying about the plight of public education. We’re cheating our children and other people’s children.”

“Better public education solves about nine problems.”

———————-

4 p.m. Q&A with the panel:

John Seely Brown – Author, on the role of technology in improving national competitiveness.

“Knowledge is being created so there’s too much to know. We need machines like IBM’s Watson to help us figure things out.”

Kathryn Wylde –CEO,  Partnership for New York City

Robert Steel – Deputy Mayor, Economic Development, NYC, on access for people with disabilities.

“The honest answer is we’ll do a better job by having advocates keep us informed. When we have groups that have special needs, we’ll have to address it by find out what are the best practices.”

“We’re dealing with the issue of taxies. Do we retrofit every taxi or do we dispatch special taxis to help people with a disability. We’re debating the issue right now.”

New York competes not just with Chicago and LA. We have to compete with Boulder and Austin. People can live in a lot places. “Dealing with the quality of life can’t be underestimated.”

The Context:

Here’s a video of John Seely Brown talking about collaborative innovation and other innovation issues:

Click here to view the embedded video.

————————–

4:15 p.m. Presentation – David McQueeney, IBM Research, talks about IBM’s Watson, the computer program that beat former grand champions at TV’s Jeopardy!

We’ve been building computing systems for 100 years, and now we’re asking computing systems to take on more and more challenging problems.

Computers can tackle thinking problems, which for a long time humans thought were reserved for out domain. Watson is one of those.

The Watson project in IBM Research shows that the kind of leaders you want in a research division are people who can pull together a large number of complex technical threads and build something that none of the individual researchers could have done by themselves.

“Watson changed the way people think about what computing might be useful for.”

————-

McQueeney talks about the government’s capabilities for taking advantage of vast amounts of data to improve services for citizens and enable collaboration.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: IBM, national competitiveness, new york city

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.

Technorati Tags: Forrester Research

Here’s Sam Palmisano’s speech:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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The Start:

2:20 p.m.      Welcome by Ricardo Pelegrini, General Manager, IBM Brazil

Two years ago, IBM started talking about a smarter plant. “Today, it’s an urgent necessity for cities to be smarter.”

Around one million people worldwide migrate to cities every week. By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities. This urbanization represents great economic opportunities and also important social and environment challenges.

Nowadays, cities consume 75% of the world’s energy, release 80% of polluting gases and waste 20% of their water due to leaks and inefficiencies in the infrastructure. “The good news is we can change our cities to make them more sustainable, and achieve growth and progress at the same time.”

Technology is available that can be used to enhance urban security, decrease traffic jams and avoid the waste of energy and water.

In the next two days, let’s analyze how cities are modernizing their systems and their infrastructure to encourage economic development, generate innovation and improve the education of the population.

—————

2:55 p.m.   SmarterCities: Crucibles of Global Progress, Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM

We have come to Rio because it is a compelling example of a new kind of actor that has appeared on the world stage – the smarter global city.

We face many challenges today. “It can seem as if the world is getting the better of our leaders.” But we see that progress is still happening and it’s being driven by forward-thinking mayors and other innovators in business, universities and non-governmental organizations in cities.

How is it that mayors are getting things done, while other leaders seem stuck?

–“These city leaders are non-ideological. They get things done.”

–Smarter city leaders think in terms of systems. An example is Rio’s intelligent operations center, which  coordinates information from more than 20 city departments.

–Smarter city leaders think – and manage – for the long term.

Amidst all the tumult in the world today, there is another model taking shape. This new generation of leaders is seizing upon the vast quantities of data their cities generate to drive growth and sustainability. “The flip side of every crisis is a vast new opportunity for progress.”

I believe future historians will look back on this moment as the dawn of a new golden age of innovation, widely shared economic growth and global citizenship.

So, let’s use the next two days to think together about what this new urban age could be and then roll up our sleeves for a collaborative work session on how to build it.

—————-

3:20 p.m.   Special Address: The SmarterCities Agenda: The Transformation of Rio de Janeiro, by Eduardo Paes, mayor of Rio

“People talk about the triumph of the city, because it’s the place where people can fulfill their destinies.”

Cities start with services that meet people’s needs. Smarter cities provide a better way to organize and interact in positive ways. Technology progress allows use to got to places we never could go before.

The creative class gathers in cities, and promotes its development.

But there are huge challenges, such as violence and environmental impacts. We face many challenges. We in Rio see these problems on a large scale.

We have prioritized the improvement of services, so we have focused on investments in technology. I monitor the progress of the city with technology every day.

I don’t know how earlier mayors were able to manage their cities without the help of these technologies.

We have been able to increase the collection of taxes without having to increase taxes, for instance.

In future days we’ll reach even higher steps.

Our intelligent operations center allows us to integrate many of the operations of the city so we can provide better services. We have been able to organize ourselves in the face of chaos—when big storms come.

For 400 years public authorities weren’t able to respond to floods and landslides. But now we can mitigate these catastrophies. We can manage risks. We can coordinate better.

We simulated heavy rains and flooding. The control center connects the mayor’s house. I had to wake up at 5 a.m. and participate in the simulation. It was sunny, but we simulated a storm. This is the kind of capability we’ll have.

We have weather information coming in. We have 400 video cameras around the city, and more are coming. IBM scientists created a high tech tool for modeling weather in the city and predict where the rains will fall, so we can react.

Thanks to the control center, we now can have constant awareness and monitoring of what’s going on in the city.

We leaders can sleep because the control center never sleeps. “It’s driving change for the way we manage the city.”

All the departments are connected up 24/7 and they’re aware of what’s going on, and they coordinating their activities. It shows that humans do need to work together.

Rio had a brain drain for a while, but now it has the capacity to attract back and retain these talents. It’s no longer just a tourist spot. Now foreigners are leaving places where there’s a crisis and coming here for opportunities.

We’re developing public-private partnerships.

Rio’s doors are open.

We hope that Rio will be one of the smart cities of the world.

———————–

3:45 p.m. Eduardo Paes, mayor of Rio, talks with Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM and Fareed Zakaria, CNN host.

Paes:

“Every city needs to decide what it wants to be. After Rio lost the capital of the country it spent 40 years about what we weren’t any more.”

“Cities are where the world is run.”

Every city has its own assets. In Rio, the environment is key. People decide to move here or invest here based on it.

“For a while, it was very popular to be a gang leader in some of our communities. They felt they were robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.” The situation got very bad.

Now we drive the criminals out of the favelas, one after another. Then we bring in the police and social services. We can transform society.

20 years ago people would say don’t touch the favelas at all. These days, we have a different situation. We can’t have more favelas. We can provide housing for the people. We have to provide transportation so they can get to work faster. Today, it might take 3 hours for poor people to get to work.

We have 600 favelas, They won’t go away. We’ll leave people where they are and bring them public safety, public works and social work.

In 2020, we’ll have all the favelas urbanized.

Palmisano:

You’re going to create a modern transportation system. I encourage you to think of it end to end, coordinate the different modes of transportation, so people can make connections and save time.

“This is systemic thinking. It’s a total system, not just a collection of separate elements.”

Predictability is key. People need that.

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Here’s a video of the panel discussion:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Here’s a look at how IBM worked with the Rio to set up an intelligent operations center:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nearly a year since inaugurating its city operations center, Rio is working with IBM to add new capabilities to city’s emergency response system by giving citizens information that will help them better manage their daily lives.

The new automated alert system will notify city officials and emergency personnel when changes occur in the flood and landslide forecast for the city. Under the previous system, notifications were manually relayed. The new alert system is expected to drastically reduce the reaction times to emergency situations by using instantaneous mobile communications, including automated email notifications and instant messaging, to reach emergency personnel and citizens.

The new alert system, developed by IBM’s Software Labs, can track the receipt of messages to ensure response is immediate and effective. Because responses to each emergency are tracked from start to finish, the alert system also provides a wealth of data available for analysis after the fact.

Another benefit Rio citizens can enjoy today is access to daily data feeds from the Rio Operations Center. The Center’s profile on Facebook and Twitter provide frequent updates on weather and traffic, as well as recommended alternative routes around the city on days of special events including concerts, soccer matches and festivals.

Citizens can follow the Rio Operations Center updates on Twitter @OperacoesRio and Facebook at Centro de Operações Rio.

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4:50 p.m. Special Address: The Transformation of Mega Cities, by  Johnny Araya Monge, mayor, San Jose City, Costa Rica.

The world’s urban population is already larger than the rural population. By 2050 it will be more than 70%.

Our big challenge will be to design a new urban paradigm. We want cities that are more democratic, more sustainable and more competitive. In the knowledge-based society, this means smarter cities. So we need smarter administration of the world’s cities.

We’re talking about the transformation of mega cities. ‘Mega cities are now a mega problem.”

All of the cities with 12 and 15 million inhabitants are in the Third World, or emerging nations. Poverty and social inclusion are part of the mix. This makes city administration very difficult.

We have the capacity to avoid such large cities being developed. We need a new paradigm for cities. We need to break down the definition of what is city and what is countryside, and what environments are protected.

It seems smart to encourage development of second-tier cities. Ideally countries should have a network of intermediate size cities and towns that are interconnected.

“Think of cities as a habitat, a space shared with plants and animals.” There should be agricultural areas, ecological protected areas and urban areas blended together.

In Costa Rica, we’re trying to reverse some of our old ideas about urbanism. Many cities were created around the idea of the freeways. These cities are spread out—they’re inefficient.  They also lead to social segregation. “A city must be a shared territory for all.”

We’re promoting growth in high-density ways, so the city is more compact. “The compact cities are always the most successful ones in the world.”

We’re using a lot of renewable energy sources, and we’re aiming to be carbon neutral as a nation.

We’re repopulating and transforming the downtown part of the city. It was abandoned. It was taken by gangs and drug leaders. We’re now rebuilding the social tissue of the downtown. We’re also promoting urban forests, using native trees along streets and avenues.

We’re putting in a tramway, and creating pedestrian streets. We’re rehabilitating the area where gangs and drug dealers were. “Thousands of people are walking downtown and it’s booming.”

The context:

Here’s Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla talking about establishing a responsible country:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Update:

6:00 p.m. Special Address: At the Intersection of Globalization and Urbanization, by Fareed Zakaria, CNN host.

I want to paint the broader picture for you. At the end of the day it’s all about improving the living standards of people around the world—giving people access to the American Dream or the Brazilian Dream.

Growing up in India, I was fascinated about the wealth, the opportunity, the dynamism of America. That’s what attracted most people to America. Behind it was the freedom and rule of law and the constitution.

Today in the US you see a lot of pessimism. But the American Dream is alive and well in Rio, in Shanghai. This is where the optimists are.

You’re seen a switch from closed systems to open systems, from isolation to engagement. These changes unleashed political stability and a reduction in warfare; economic convergence—globalization and the adoption of best economic and business practices; and technological connectivity—the information revolution.

It unleashes enormous opportunities. Brazil has been able to take advantage of these changes and plug into the global economy and play.

The challenge for the future is this extraordinary opportunity. Everybody is moving through this at the same time. A lot of people in Asia and Latin America prospered. Governments just had to do simple things, and they got economic growth.

Now you have reached some degree of saturation of the easy path to rising per capital GDP. We’re entering a more challenging phase.

“This is the final phase of industrialization. Everything in your society has to be modernized. Everything has to be smart.”

It’s a lot more than supply and demand. You have to straighten out your infrastructure, your legal system. You have to improve productivity growth.

You have to deal with traffic and pollution. You can only deal with that with improved labor productivity. That’s increasingly difficult to do it because you live in a competitive world. “You’re in a competitive race with other cities around the world.”

To see where real growth is happening, don’t look at the mega cities of the world. There are a few exceptions, like New York and London, because of the financial industry. The real growth is in the 600 middle-tier cities underneath them. They may form themselves into clusters, tapping new transportation and communications infrastructures.

In the US, American companies like IBM are doing extraordinarily well in this global world. They master the shifts in technology. But the average American worker, the American city—they’re struggling.

People in the United States will have to adapt like hell. I’m optimistic, though.

Look at all the things happening around the world. It’s easy to get gloomy. But the pressures of globalization are forcing innovation, productivity gains and better governance.

“Ultimately this is going to have a beneficial effect.”

“This is all about unleashing human talent in away that we’ve never seen before and on a scale we’ve never seen before.”

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Here’s Fareed’s speech:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Here are wrap-up comments by Bruno Di Leo, IBM’s general manager for the growth markets.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: Brazil, IBM, Rio de Janeiro

(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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Over time, cities have gradually adopted technologies to monitor and control discrete systems—such as subways, stop lights, air traffic, and the like. What’s different today is that for the first time all of the functions and activities within a city can be integrated with one another. It’s like a conductor directing an orchestra rather than each musician playing his or her own melody.

Integration of streams of information is important because all of the natural and man-made systems that play roles in the life of a city are interdependent. If you do something that affects one of them, others likely will be affected as well. And, also, if you fix one thing, you may unintentionally break another. For example, in the United States, the construction of a highway across one of the boroughs of New York City made it possible for cars to traverse the city more quickly, but also contributed to the decline of whole neighborhoods that were cut in half by the thoroughfare. So it’s crucial to recognize the interconnectedness of systems, and to take that into account when trying to solve complex urban problems.

In Rio, Mayor Paes recognized the importance of integrating data from multiple sources  into a comprehensive view of the city. The system even enhances the communications with other organizations, including the police department, which is managed by the state, and the news media. There’s a media center in the building so the city can alert citizens about problem situations via a variety of news outlets.

Right now, because of the 2010 flooding, weather is the hot button in Rio. IBM researchers created a computer analysis model that combines current weather conditions and forecast data with detailed information about topography and transportation. With the model, they can accurately predict potential flooding and mudslides down to the block level up to 48 hours in advance. That gives city operations managers plenty of time to order evacuations, close off streets pro-actively and position equipment to be at ready. In the end, this is about saving lives.

But there was another incentive for Mayor Paes to create an operations center capable of monitoring and managing the functions of the city. He foresaw that such a system would be vital for Rio to deal with the upcoming World Cup Soccer tournament in 2014 and Olympics in 2016. The next phase of the project is likely to address public transportation. Better coordination of the various transportation systems could make travel easier for citizens and visitors, and more efficient for the city—plus reduce traffic congestion.

Mayor Paes and the Rio intelligent operations center demonstrate the potential for cities to be managed much more efficiently and effectively. What’s required is decisiveness, a willingness to make long-term investments and a deep understanding of how cities really work. These are key ingredients of what it takes to create a smarter city. 

Technorati Tags: IBM, Mayor Eduardo Paes, Rio de Janeiro

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.

The new lab has three items on its research agenda. In addition to disaster resilience, it focuses on bringing information technologies to bear on natural resources extraction and on life sciences research related to health care. The idea is to develop expertise and lines of inquiry that are closely aligned with the national priorities in Australia, and, at the same time, to develop technologies that can be applied anywhere in the world.

Critical to the lab’s effectiveness is its very close relationship with the University of Melbourne, which is one of Australia’s premier universities. The relationship began four years ago when the university began seeking a major research partner within industry–and chose IBM. Early last year, the university and IBM established a formal “collaboratory,” a long-term collaborative research project focusing on computational biology and the life sciences, which included the installation in Melbourne of an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. When IBM launched a global expansion of its research efforts earlier this year, Melbourne was an obvious location to consider. The new lab is near the university campus.

The tie-up with the university is makes it easy for IBM researchers to get deeply involved in research into specific domains. For instance, earlier this year a handful of IBM computational specialists spent a month working side-by-side with academic researchers at the Bio21 Institute, a university research center. This experience resulted in new lines of research inquiry and a number of academic papers being co-written with their hosts. “This is a transformative experience from a research perspective that has brought all sorts of collaboration,” says Wightwick.

When IBM’s leaders began trying out the collaboratory model a few years ago, the advantages for IBM were obvious: it made an expansion of research more affordable and connected IBM more closely with the needs of clients. Now it’s clear that what’s good for IBM is very attractive to academic partners and government leaders, as well. IBM R&D Australia has been built from the ground up on the principle of collaboration.

Technorati Tags: IBM, University of Melbourne

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

Better use of data can help government agencies, from city agencies to federal bureaucracies, operate more efficiently, create more transparency, and make more informed decisions.  And government can use cloud computing to more efficiently develop online systems that provide anytime, anywhere access to information. However, government officials should do more to spur uses of data. Taking advantage of these opportunities will require federal government leadership, such as the Department of Commerce creating a data policy office to spur data innovation and overcome obstacles to adoption, all the while protecting privacy.  And going forward, government agencies will increasingly have to deal with issues such as data security and identity management, so these issues do  not become impediments to successful utilization of data analytics. Local governments can help pioneer the use of data as well.  For example, the city of Boston city sponsored the development of a mobile app “Street Bump” to automatically determine where potholes are based on data collected using citizen’s smart phones equipped with GPS and accelerometers. Tools like these are helping create “smart cities” and build a world that is alive with information.

Although there have been many successes in this area, much more can be done.  For example, in homeland security, law enforcement must deal with a changing threat landscape.  While corporations and individuals can increasingly use better technology to communicate and store data security, criminals can also use these same tools.  As a result, law enforcement is increasingly confronting the “Going Dark” problem where they have less access to investigative data, not because of a lack of legal authority, but because of technological hurdles.  Yet while law enforcement may have a reduced ability to intercept some types of communication, they now have many more sources of data, such as transactional data, to use to detect threats.  As ITIF discussed at an event in 2010 following the Christmas Day terrorist attempt, the intelligence community still needs to develop better analytical tools to “connect the dots” and allow intelligence officers to do a better job. Similarly in many other sectors, Big Data offers government opportunities to reinvent how to operate effectively.

Overall, more investment in data infrastructure and analytics will enable government to better provide and efficiently deliver values and services to its citizens.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Robert Atkinson