Ever since the dawn of the nanotechnology era, IBM scientists have been pushing atoms around in an effort to discover the possibilities of doing big things in the smallest of physical spaces.

It all started in 1981, when two IBM researchers, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, made nanotechnology possible by inventing the scanning tunneling microscope. The STM enabled scientists to visualize the world all the way down to its molecules and atoms. For their work, the two won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. Four years later, IBM researcher Don Eigler used the STM to move individual atoms, writing the initials I-B-M in atoms to demonstrate the capability.

Today, scientists at IBM Research-Almaden in San Jose, Calif., took nano manipulation to a new level. They revealed that they have discovered the fewest atoms that can be used to store one bit of magnetic information reliably. The answer: 12 atoms. To illustrate their discovery, they spelled out IBM’s long-time motto, “THINK,” in binary form using iron atoms oriented in columns and rows.

Their discovery points to data storage technologies that would be 100 times denser than today’s hard disk drives and 1000 times denser than today’s solid state memory chips. “It could revolutionize the way that computing uses memory and storage,” says Andreas Heinrich, the physics researcher who headed up the project.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Heinrich has been working on understanding the magnetic properties of atoms on surfaces for a decade. The research team’s technique combines the principles of quantum mechanics with traditional magnetics.

He believes their discoveries will help enable the advance of so-called quantum computing, which is different from traditional computers based on transistors. Quantum computing replaces transistors with nano-scale devices that can be used to represent data and perform operations on the data at the same time. Essentially, clusters of atoms are talking to themselves. It’s one of the means by which scientists hope to deal with the limitations of today’s semiconductors. Chip designers are bumping up against the laws of physics as they shrink transistors and other components on chips to nano-scale dimensions.

“People will look back ten years from now and say this was a game-changer,” predicts Heinrich.

Technorati Tags: Andreas Heinrich, IBM, nanotechnology

You will never need a password again
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Mind reading is no longer science fiction
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The digital divide will cease to exist
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Junk mail will become priority mail
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Technorati Tags: IBM, The Next 5 in 5

Vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below.

Read an in-depth blog post from IBM Research about the technology underlying the prediction.

Join the Twitter conversation at #IBM5in5

I’d add that if you create a large pool of people with analytics skills, you’re going to create a lot of high-value jobs. That’s one of the reasons that IBM is helping more than 200 universities worldwide develop programs and curricula aimed at preparing business, computer science and engineering students for careers in analytics. In the forefront of the movement is Northwestern University, which has introduced two new masters degree programs in analytics—one for traditional graduate students and another for adult professionals who are acquiring new skills.

How do skills create jobs? Think of it this way: People who have advanced scientific and technical skills will see the world through the prism of those possibilities and will create companies based on their visions. This is one of the bases for the success of Silicon Valley, where Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley helped build the intellectual foundation for one of the world’s premier economic development success stories. Also, smart business people will establish businesses where the proper conditions exist for their success–and having the right talent pool is essential. So skilling up people will be a catalyst for innovation, new business ideas and, therefore, job creation.

Now consider analytics. It will clearly be one of most important skill sets in the coming decades. A global technology industry is being built around these new capabilities. But these skills will be vital for more than IT and business consulting firms. Every person at nearly every level in a knowledge-based company will do their work better with the help of analytics. So, it’s clear that if a community creates and attracts a large talent pool of people with analytics skills, it will receive a strong return on its investments.

In this time of fiscal austerity, it’s difficult for governments to find the money to adequately invest in public education. But those with ambition and foresight will find ways to do so. And they’ll be rewarded for it with job growth, a dynamic economy and rewarding careers for their young people.

Weigh in on analytics and the future of competitiveness in comments here and at #us competes.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Northwestern

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.

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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.”

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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.

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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

Since then, Social Security has stood as one of the bedrocks of the American economy and a vital element of the country’s global competitiveness. Americans can rest assured that if they work hard and play by the rules, they won’t suffer severe privation in old age. It gives every worker a stake in the country’s success.

The Social Security Act was one of the bold strokes by government that helped define America’s place in the world in the 20^th century—along with the Marshall Plan, the space program, the Peace Corps and the Internet.

Some people argue that in this era of austerity, government can no longer afford to launch bold new programs aimed at making the world 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. Sometimes this collaboration will take the shape of formal public-private partnerships, like when the US government and IBM teamed up to create the technical infrastructure of the Social Security system; other times  not.

On Dec. 8, IBM is convening a conference, US Competitiveness: the Next 100 Years, to generate strategies for rekindling America’s competitiveness in the years ahead. The event will be held at Roosevelt House, where the president and Perkins conducted their fateful meeting. For live blogging from the event, check in between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. on the 8^th. Please Tweet to #uscompetes.

Technorati Tags: IBM, US competitiveness

The book, published in June in the United States and more recently in seven other languages, is Making the World Work  Better: The Ideas that Shaped a Century and a Company.

To do the research and writing, IBM commissioned three journalists, Kevin Maney, Jeffrey O’Brien and myself. Mike Wing, IBM’s speech writer extraordinaire, was the editor. I believe that all four of us would tell you that making this book was one of the more interesting and intellectually challenging experiences in our careers.

Now we’d like to share the experience with you via the Making the World Work Better book club on Goodreads. From Nov. 28 to Dec. 9, we’ll be responding to questions from readers. The club is open to all IBMers, alumni and the general public. So please join us–and don’t worry if you haven’t finished the book yet.

How to join the club:

• Register for a free account on Goodreads.com or log in using your Facebook, Twitter or Google account information.
• On Goodreads.com, join the Making the World Work Better author Q&A group.
  (note: if you are not logged in you may see the message “membership is restricted”)

Once you’ve joined, make the most of your experience:

• Discuss the book with other readers or add new questions for the authors.
• Invite others to join the group.
• Use the hashtag #IBM100book when you tweet about the book.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Making the World Work Better

Chamitoff’s list of accomplishments is long, indeed. He has four engineering and science degrees, including a Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. He worked as a college professor and, at NASA, wrote software programs for control monitoring, analysis and maneuver optimization  for the space station. He has conducted cutting edge experiments in space, including, on the flight this year, a particle physics experiment aimed at unwrapping the mysteries of anti matter, dark matter and dark energy.

Yet when Chamitoff spoke to a group of IBMers earlier this week, he stressed the importance of differentiating between accomplishments and finding meaning in life. “What’s the purpose of my life? It can’t be just the sequence of milestones,” he said. One of his purposes is to inspire the next generation of young people to study science and engineering. “It’s tremendously important for the future of our country,” he says.

After he returned from his first stint in space, Chamitoff helped organize Zero Robotics, a software programming competition for high school and university students that’s sponsored by MIT. Students write programs for SPHERES satellites, soccer-ball-sized robots that fly around in the space station. An astronaut conducts the championship competition in a live broadcast from the ISS.  Chamitoff also participated in chess games in space where astronauts competed with students from around the world. (Without gravity to contend with, the chess board and pieces float in the air.)

Chamitoff treasures his experiences in space. He was thrilled when he was on the space station the first time to place a call to actor William Shatner, the star of Star Trek. During his presentation, he showed a striking photograph of the view out of his portal on the ISS–with the earth spreading out beneath the insect-like structure of the space station and the sky full of stars. The view was so stunning that it was difficult to fall asleep at night.  “You feel like you can reach out and touch the future,” he said.

Technorati Tags: Greg Chamitoff, IBM, NASA

Technorati Tags: IBM, Rio

Update:

Here’s Ginni Rometty, IBM’s senior vice president for Sales, Marketing and Strategy (and IBM’s next CEO) talking about how to build a smarter city.

Click here to view the embedded video.

——————————-

9:00 a.m. Special Address: Economic Recovery, Urbanization and The City, by Alfonso Vegara Gómez, President, Fundación Metrópoli.

Cities have transformed themselves with such intensity. The challenge of the 21^st Century is to build a better urban environment.

“We can’t build cities in the conventional way. We would destroy the planet.” We have to use smart technologies and ideas to build cities in a sustainable way, and a way that provides jobs and economic growth.

In the future there will be super cities and mega metropolitan areas. Between Washington DC and Boston, for instance. We’ll need new transportation systems. The cities in the corridor will share talents.The same in Europe: From Lisbon to Madrid; ultimately you’ll get a huge cluster of connected cities in Europe. “This is the new scale in which you can compete.”

Some exampled of smart cities: Singapore, the new city state. They bet on a port economy. They have smart transportation. They attract talent focusing on IT, media and bio-med. In compact urban spaces they have combined expertise and creativity.

Bilbao, Spain. It integrated all of the systems. It integrated art with urban architecture. Bilbao hasn’t been successful in attracting talent. This will be a big challenge. It has to compete with other cities in a knowledge economy.

The challenge is to build a new urban development park, which will include all of the modern elements: architecture, art, communications, and improved infrastructure.

————————–

9:30 a.m. A Conversation with: Pablo Allard, Decano de Arquitectura y Arte de la UDD y Asesor Senior de Reconstrucción Urbana; Dr. Néstor Bercovich, Coordinador ECLAC, Plan Regional para la Sociedad de la Información de América Latina y el Caribe ECLAC; and Wilson Ferreira Junior., President, CPFL Energia.

Bercovich: We need to rethink the state so we can rise to the challenges of urbanization. A wide variety of stakeholders need to cooperate and innovate.

The free market has created distortions in the social fabric of cities. There’s a huge disparity in wealth and services. This needs to be addressed.

Smarter platforms are the base from which we make the systems of cities and regions work better. For instance, broadband needs to be made available widely and affordably.

Allard: Urban centers, if they’re smarter, can begin to address some of the inequities. They can be a source of economic opportunity for the people of the favelas.

In the future the rate of population growth will go down, and that will make it possible for personal income to come up. Latin American cities will get wealthier and offer new opportunities. “We will have a population that demands a better quality of life.”

“Favelas are full of small entrepreneurs who will make the most of the opportunities that are offered to them.” Little by little, they’ll reach the middle class.

But we need smarter systems in the cities to make this possible.

The context:

Pablo Allard, dean of architecture and art, Desarrollo University, Chile, talks about why he’s “addicted to smarter cities.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

———————-

10:30 a.m. Special Address: Smart Investments in Cities: Managing for the Long-Term, by Luciano Coutinho, president, The Brazilian Development Bank.

The quality of life in cities and the city ecosystem constitute key factor in innovation going forward. Traditionally we saw that innovation was is driven by three pillars: big private companies, government subsidies and universities. But that’s the old paradigm. Now there are additional factors: cities, NGOs and society.

If we can make cities more efficient we can increase their creative output. A smart city doesn’t just need to be efficient. It needs to have quality of life and creativity. “A city is an ecosystem that encourages innovation and creativity.”

Technological progress will increase in the coming years. Mobile computing is going to be an important factor. Broadband access is increasing greatly. We need to deploy sensors, and large scale databases.

All of this makes information about what’s going on in the city and how it’s working widely available to everybody.

“The city is becoming a new thing.”

In Latin America and Brazil, cities are a bigger factor than they are in other areas of the world. We have 34 cities in Brazil with 45% of the population, and Rio and Sao Paulo have 25% of the GDP of the country. “We need to reinforce the mid-tier cities and prevent them from falling into the same traps as the mega cities, with their traffic and pollution problems.”

We’re at a critical moment in Brazil. We must have a high level of performance and competitiveness. Our public services must be more efficient and more creative.

————————

11:00 a.m. A Conversation with: James W. Breyer, partner, Accel Partners, Luciano Coutinho, president, The Brazilian Development Bank, and Marcelo Haddad, executive director, Rio Negócios. Discussion leader: Marcus Regueira, founding partner, FIR Capital.

Breyer: I’m interested in investing in Brazil. We think through the cultural attributes of great entrepreneurs. Is there a common characteristic?

“The people we like to back have passion, think about long term impact and think about building high impact team from the beginning.”

We’ve seen many of these characteristics in Brazil. We see entrepreneurs building strong teams of co-founders. Every location is a little different. In Silicon Valley today we’re finding very young breakthrough technologists. When I first met Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook I took him out to dinner and I offered him a glass of wine, but he said he was not yet 21. He’d have a Sprite.

Brazil will be one of our three most important countries for investments in the coming years.

Coutinho: In Brazil, we need to create an ecosystem for entrepreneurship. The Brazilian capital markets are still a step behind. “We need to create an atmosphere for entrepreneurship by young people. That’s vital to creating smarter cities.”

Regueira; What we need for venture capital to take off in Brazil is a quarter of a billion dollar exit.

Breyer: The city and country have to minimize the difficulties for young people to get going. One thing we have lost in the US is the idea of allowing small businesses to thrive without uncertainty and significant regulatory overhang.

You need a partnership between great entrepreneurs, people who come in early to help them scale the company—without losing the entrepreneurial spirit, and also partnerships with large and important companies.

“The first trillion dollar valuation company could come from Brazil.”

Here’s the video of the panel:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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11:30 a.m. Special Address: How to Build a Smarter City, by Ginni Rometty, IBM’s senior vice president of sales, marketing and strategy—and next CEO.

“Brazil is a country full of natural resources. We think of information as the world’s next important national resource.”

We’re heard a lot about why people should build smarter cities. My focus today is on how.

So how does a city actually get started? Over the last year or so, we’ve reviewed thousands of Smart City initiatives. We’ve identified three common steps that are taken in successful projects.

–By instrumenting different city systems, the city can leverage data as a strategic tool to understand the performance of those systems, and be in a position to managing them better–responding to changes in those systems more rapidly and effectively.

–Once a city has developed that solid foundation, they can start to think about integrating key processes within and across systems.  You can take the data and use it across departments and functions.

–Cities can start to optimize their systems and transform service delivery. Analytics become key here. “You can start to re-imagine the art of the possible.” It’s not just about using analytics to examine the past, but to predict the future.

Value goes up with each of these three steps.

We have also identified key leadership skills for Smarter cities.

–The complexity of cities requires us to understand the city as a system-of-systems and manage it accordingly.

–“We need to build a culture of analytics versus gut-check decision making.”

–Managing and coordinating across city systems will require all city leaders to collaborate with one another, with local business leaders, and other influencers in new ways.

I hope that we’ve been able to provide some guiding principles here that we’ve learned from hundreds of Smarter City engagements, and that have opened our eyes as to what it takes for cities to be successful.

——————-

Noon: A Conversation with: Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter, chairman of Gerdau, Gerdau Steel, and a private sector leader in Brazil’s economic development; and Kenneth Schwartz, dean, School of Architecture, Tulane University. Discussion Leader: Ginni Rometty, IBM’s senior vice president for sales, marketing and strategy, and the next CEO.

Schwartz: Tulane was impacted by Hurricane Katrina. We had to shut it down for months.  Now we’re back and the city of New Orleans is back. We’re both building more sustainably and smarter.

We’re using the school of architecture and technology from IBM to see if we can achieve significant carbon use. We’ll take what we learn to other buildings on the campus.

Instrumentation was relatively easy. Integration was harder. We had to get our school, IT and facilities to work together.

“We think of buildings as the building blocks of cities.” You can experiment in buildings and a university campus and then model solutions that you can use city wide.

Gerdau: We started a movement to build the economy of Brazil based on using management technologies.

The public sector is inefficient.

“What decides a country’s wealth today is its management competency.”

Cities have to be build and rebuilt by seeing them as an integrated unit. Technology is important for gathering information, but it’s not enough.

You need to do management with efficient technology. But it only works when your have good governance aligned with strategy.

Political will is perhaps the biggest challenge. I like to talk to government leaders. I feel there’s lack of policy. We have to transform cities. It requires the kind of strategic thinking I don’t see now.

We have to get our communities involved so they see this is the way forward. Maybe it’s in our education. Time is being wasted. How can we harness all of this?

“We have to change culture.”

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12:15 p.m. Key Observations from Sam Palmisano, IBM’s CEO.

We operate in 170 countries and every political system. All societies are going through a transition. The same goes with companies. You can be optimistic or see it as concerning. How do some do it better than others?

Your have to re-prioritize. You have to take things that were done one way in the past and come up with new approaches.

Mayor Paes of Rio surrounded himself with professional managers. “Good management is the key to getting things done.”

——————

Breakout session

Emergency Management: Learning from the Leaders

Moderator: Guru Banavar, CTO, Global Public Sector, IBM; Pedro Almeida, Director, Smarter Cities Strategy, IBM Brazil; Pablo Allard, Dean of Architecture and Art, Desarrollo University; Carlos Roberto Osorio, secretary for Conservation & Public Service, City of Rio de Janeiro; and Pablo Escudero, general director, Madrid Police Department

Banavar: There’s an impression that more disasters are happening. Part of it is that because of modern communications, we know more about what’s happening. But it’s true for floods, perhaps caused by global warming. There are also man-made disasters, such as nuclear disasters. These kinds of massive events require a long term planning, preparedness and response system.

Factoid: $265 billion total global economic losses due to natural disasters in the first half of 2011.

We can do a lot to prevent these kinds of losses.

We’ll look at four types of events: natural disasters, terrorism, industrial accidents and large-scale events like protests and riots, but also the World Cup and the Olympics.

The density of communities in coastal communities has  been increasing, and those populations are the most vulnerable

Four stages for managing disasters: Mitigation, such as building codes; short-term preparedness, responding to warnings; response with full situational awareness of what’s happening; recovery and long term rehabilitation.

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Breakout session

Emergency Management: Learning from the Leaders
Second installment

Moderator: Guru Banavar, CTO, Global Public Sector, IBM; Pedro Almeida, Director, Smarter Cities Strategy, IBM Brazil; Pablo Allard, Dean of Architecture and Art, Desarrollo University; Carlos Roberto Osorio, secretary for Conservation & Public Service, City of Rio de Janeiro; and Pablo Escudero, general director, Madrid Police Department

Osorio: We have two major challenges in Rio. We have a history of natural disasters mainly caused by heavy rains and flooding and mudslides, and we have a history of dealing with large scale events.

We were very poorly prepared to face natural disasters.

Every five or six years on average we have a major natural event, but we have flooding every year. We have had two big events in the past two years. It seems to be a pattern. It could be global warming.

In the past we’d say it’s god’s will. We just reacted.

The city decided to approach the situation head on. We felt it was our obligation to meet the challenge in a different way.

They mayor who is 42 started his political life as deputy mayor in part of the city. He was in charge of the region when it had a disaster about 14 years ago.

When he became mayor, he was the emergency response plans and felt it wasn’t enough. Early 2009. He ordered a study.

We had a major disaster–incredible rain. More than 70 people died here. We used the plan to some extent, but not enough

We decided to have an emergency response center but later decided to make a city operations center to handle a wide variety of situations.

We had an organization with many fiefdoms, but, in order to respond to disasters, you have to cooperate. They mayor made people work together.

So we have become much more agile.

We’re facing big events coming to Rio, including the World Cup and Olympics. They’re a big challenge for us. They’re big and complex events. The operation center is a major tool to enable our preparations and response.

This year, we had the Rock in Rio festival with 700,000 people. The last edition was 2001 and was a total disaster. Nobody could move in the area. But this year the operational part worked well. We reacted very quickly, and the operations center was instrumental. We think we’ll be ready for what’s coming.

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Breakout session

Emergency Management: Learning from the Leaders
Installment 3

Moderator: Guru Banavar, CTO, Global Public Sector, IBM; Pedro Almeida, Director, Smarter Cities Strategy, IBM Brazil; Pablo Allard, Dean of Architecture and Art, Desarrollo University, Chile; Carlos Roberto Osorio, secretary for Conservation & Public Service, City of Rio de Janeiro; and Pablo Escudero, general director, Madrid Police Department

Allard: In Chile we had the large earthquake and tsunami, and it was also widely dispersed. We had more than 700 kilometers of land affected. The disaster affected the three main metro areas in Chile and many smaller cities. Five major highways were broken. Many buildings fell—even some built in the past few years. More than 500 people died. 370,000 houses were destroyed or damaged.

The neighboring communities had to come and help the ones that were affected.

First response, lasted 33 days. It was coordinated by the emergency ministry.

Reconstruction is expected to take four years.

I worked on the reconstruction.

We opened a voluntary record for families that had suffered damage. This helped us relocate them. They received vouchers.

We arranged for houses to be rebuilt by private companies. These projects were subsidized.

Six months after the catastrophe we had 60,000 emergency houses built, where people could stay while their permanent houses were built.

It was a huge management challenge. We had to track people’s identity and map it to their location and what was being done for them.

We invited companies to present different kind of building systems. We had a fair where the families could go and chose the type of house.

We had voting by the people to chose the best designs. The winners started quickly.

But we also wanted to use the rebuilding to create smart options. We studied the risks in locations by the coast.

For places that were especially vulnerable, we designed the houses to be resilient to quakes and tsunamis.

By this September we had more than 60,000 houses built and more than 200,000 under construction. We expect to have all the houses built in February 2014.

Lessons:

–Be prepared for the worst case scenario.

–Manage the expectations of the people after the disaster.

–Communicate complexity and time frame.

–Reinforce local capacity and leadership.

Here’s Allard talking about why he’s a “smarter cities addict.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Emergency Management: Learning from the Leaders
Installment 4

Moderator: Guru Banavar, CTO, Global Public Sector, IBM; Pedro Almeida, Director, Smarter Cities Strategy, IBM Brazil; Pablo Allard, dean of Architecture and Art, Desarrollo University, Chile; Carlos Roberto Osorio, secretary for Conservation & Public Service, City of Rio de Janeiro; and Pablo Escudero, general director, Madrid Police Department.

Escudero: We created an emergency response system in 2006 that turned into a crime fighting system as well.

Here’s a look at Madrid’s emergency management system:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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