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Today news of a brand new global charity called Energy Aid will start spreading around the world. Given that nearly half of the world’s population lacks access to modern sources of energy, the charity has an impressive mission to provide universal energy access. This means people in the world’s poorest areas including South America, South Asia and sub Saharan Africa could have their lives changed forever if they had access to energy for heating, lighting, cooking, communications and mechanical work.

With IBM and international development charity Practical Action already on board as founding partners Energy Aid plans to provide investment and resources including data, technology and skills to support charities and agencies running or planning energy projects in the target areas.

In the lead up to the global launch building a solid business case for the charity was key. A vital element of this planning was research conducted by myself and a team at the London School of Economics. We went out to visit and study organisations in India and Peru that could engage with Energy Aid in the future and make our recommendations on how Energy Aid could add value.

We analysed five case studies through site visits and interviews. The organisations were grouped into either partner organisations which illustrated how Energy Aid could contribute to existing issues, or peer organisations which illustrated how similar organisations went about achieving their objectives.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Following our research Energy Aid finalised its business model now has three key strategies: an awareness campaign launching in 2012 dedicated to raising the issue of energy access in the public conscience, an open source of data, resources, technologies and research and a fund to raise and invest money into deserving long-term game-changing projects.

We are looking forward to seeing how Energy Aid develops over the next year and hope the issue of universal energy for all continues to grow in prominence with businesses and individuals.

We are not alone. Sustainable energy is an increasingly global concern with 2012 announced as the “UN Year of Sustainable Energy for All,” with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon giving a personal commitment towards the cause, and the UN Earth Summit Rio 20 in June 2012 will focus on alleviating energy access.

Technorati Tags: charity, csr, energy, Energy & Environment, energy aid, sustainability, water

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

Technorati Tags: Brazil, IBM, Rio de Janeiro

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

A couple of IBM scientists think they’ve found a smart way to do that. Kota Murali and Roger Schmidt are the brains behind the Holistic Green Data Center–an integrated package of technologies designed to bring solar energy to data centers, avoid energy-sapping DC-to-AC power conversions and use water for cooling by running it directly under the microprocessors in server computers.

Each of the pieces by itself could create significant energy savings. Taken together, they offer the potential of transforming the way data centers are designed in sunny locations and greatly expanding the availability and lowering the cost of computing in developing countries in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.

The seed of the idea was planted nearly two years ago when Schmidt, an IBM Fellow and the company’s chief engineer for data center energy efficiency, gave a lecture about water-cooled computer systems in Bangalore, India, where IBM has a large workforce. In the audience was Murali, the lead scientist for nanotechnology in IBM India. Murali made the connections: India has abundant solar energy. Solar energy produces direct current, which was is required to run computers. And a new generation of computers was on the way that would be cooled super-effectively by water–greatly reducing the need for traditional air conditioning. He approached Schmidt after his lecture and they began a collaboration that by the end of the this year is expected to result in a small IBM data center in Bangalore running the solar-and-water system as a test bed. “This creates a highly efficient system,” says Murali.

The potential savings are impressive. By avoiding conversion from AC to DC, they figure they’ll shave 10% off of energy consumption. In Bangalore, where the sun shines an average of 330 days per year, they expect to save 20% in energy costs by using solar as the primary energy source rather than relying on an electricity grid.

There’s another benefit that’s not obvious to people in mature economies. In many emerging markets, electrical grids are undependable or non-existent. Companies are forced to rely way too much on expensive diesel generators. That makes it difficult and expensive to deploy a lot of computers, especially in the concentrated way they’re used in data centers. But, with this holistic approach, a bank, a telecommunications company or a government agency could contemplate setting up a data center that doesn’t need the grid.

For Kota, who grew up in India but got his PhD at MIT in the United States, this approach to running data centers has an immense appeal. “As a scientist, it’s satisfying because you’re reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions,” he says. “As somebody who’s interested in social impact, it will be great to see these systems transform the lives of people who don’t have much electrical power and computing power. It can change life.”

If this experiment works as planned, IBM plans on offering the technology to clients.

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What seems like a random question was actually a something that was being asked this week by leaders from government and business that attended the Smarter Cities Roundtable in Nairobi this week. Stakeholders from the Kenyan government, private sector and civil society gathered to identify Nairobi’s most significant challenges in order to frame discussion on technology could ease the city’s transitional growth.

In the next 20 years, Nairobi’s population – already the largest on the East coast of Africa – is set to exceed that of these three mega cities in coming years. The Kenyan capital’s population will balloon by 65 per cent over the next decade to stand at between 8-10 million, presenting a unique challenge to a city that is already struggling under to accommodate the needs of its residents. The main challenges are transportation, utilities, safety and security and urban planning.

So as leaders from government and business look for best practice from other cities for how have tackled their urban challenges, the examples of Rio, London and Singapore are actually more relevant than we might have suspected.

A simple drive through Nairobi today will expose you to some of the issues at hand. The IBM Commuter Pain study has already flagged Nairobi as the fourth most painful commute in the world, with some residents reporting traffic jams lasting as long as 90 minutes to cover just five miles. The pollution from the clogged and congested traffic as well as the condition of the roads and sidewalks makes walking or cycling almost inconceivable.

As Christian Schlosser, Chief of the UN-Habitat’s Urban Transport Section put it “there are basically too many cars on roads designed for ten times less traffic.”

And with a lack of investment in public transport systems, 75 percent of vehicles in Nairobi travel passengerless.

The parking situation in Nairobi is no better. IBM’s first parking survey released recently showed that drivers in Nairobi take an average of 31.7 minutes to find a parking spot against a global average of 19.8 minutes.

Energy management is also a problem today in Nairobi – energy fluctuations are common, with Nairobi experiencing 11,000 blackouts every month. Inefficient utility systems also lead to higher energy prices which impair economic development.

Security remains a constant worry for Nairobi’s residents in a city where 9 out of 10 calls to state emergency services go unanswered and residents are increasingly turning to private security and ambulance providers when they are in trouble.

The roundtable discussion this week provoked a pivotal discussion on how to get both public and private sector to pull together to meet a joint objective of transforming Nairobi into a Smarter City. For example, it emerged during the discussion that both public and private sectors are currently building emergency control rooms in Nairobi in separate, uncoordinated projects.

In a country known for its quick and transformative adoption of modern technologies to its own unique needs, the roundtable was quick to latch onto the low hanging fruits.

Tony Mwai, IBM’s Country Manager who hosted the event, gave a concrete example of how technology could provide an innovative solution to some of Nairobi’s congestion problems. With over 70 per cent of the population already on mobile networks, the density of mobile signals could be used to indicate where congestion is heaviest.

Another area of interest in the discussion was how social media could help to strengthen the relationship between government departments, citizens, private sector companies and civil society organizations.

The round table session was moderated by noted financial analyst Aly-Khan Satchu and was attended by high level policy makers and CEOs from a number of sectors including: Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary for Information; Eddy Njoroge, Managing Director, KENGEN; Wolfgang Fengler, Chief Economist, World Bank; Steven Oundo, Architectural Society of Kenya; Christian Schlosser, Chief of Urban Transport Section, UN-Habitat, Lucas Ndolo, KK Security and local entrepreneur Esther Passaris.

The final outcomes from the roundtable discussion will be shared with the wider public in a white paper and video film later this year.

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Here’s a minidocumentary about how IBM’s Corporate Service Corps has helped Kenyan government leaders transform government services.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Kenya

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

Next month, I’ll be meeting with key industry experts to discuss Security metrics at the EnerSec Smart Grid Security Summit in San Diego. We’ll covering the challenges with, and business benefits of measuring utilities’ smart grid with the right metrics, including organizational security maturity. This got me thinking about consumers and behavioral economics and what we value as important. Is it convenience, social acceptance, security, privacy, price?

If you live in a region where smart meters have yet to arrive, then this may not matter much to you … yet. But if, in the last few months or years you’ve found a utility technician swapping out your stone-age mechanical electricity meter for a new 21st century, computerized Smart Meter, then you may be tuned into the discussions on whether this change is a good or bad thing for you or your family.

As someone who follows the issue as part of my day job at IBM, as well as an after hours blogger, I am certainly inclined to say that having a Smart Meter is an important first step that will enable some great new capabilities for you, once the rest of the grid, in the form of the coming Smart Grid, catches up. Though it’s largely been held in check thanks to cheap coal and newly cheap natural gas, the cost of electricity has been increasing in many regions and it’s expected that costs will rise more in coming years. It’s also projected that the proliferation of new electronic devices in the home will amplify the impacts of price increases. Most notably, these include multiple large HD screens today, and electric vehicles tomorrow. Smart Meters are the first step in helping consumers get a better sense of their electricity use patterns, make adjustments, and keep their bill down, by being able to see their amount their currently using as well as the cost of electricity at that time.

In most regions of the US and the world, these capabilities won’t fully arrive for a little while … depending where you live, maybe several years from now. But when they do, it’ll mark a major change in the way we think about electricity and how we interact with our utilities. It’ll be much more of a self service model where individuals will have much more control. But along the path to this better approach to electricity delivery and consumption, consumer groups and journalists have remarked on potential risks that attend the deployment of Smart Meters. Some, like health concerns related to radio frequency emissions the meters use to communicate with utilities, have been largely allayed by scientific studies showing they are not harmful. But others, like privacy concerns, persist.

In theory, should a hacker or other cyber intruder gain access to your electricity usage data, they might be able to infer when you’re not home or not awake.  In my humble opinion, there are far simpler, less technical ways of making these observations today.

But this position aside, there are real reasons why protecting your data is important, and we are now seeing significant safeguards emerge in places like California that mandates utilities follow certain rules and procedures when handling electricity usage data that can be linked with individuals. That’s what makes it a privacy concern, by the way.  Usage data that’s not associated with any one person has very little value to a would-be criminal.

Canada, and in particular Smart Meter leader Ontario, places a very high premium on protecting customers’ privacy. This is largely the case across much of Europe, as well, and with California’s leadership, similar privacy protections will likely ripple across the rest of the US in coming years.

What I’m trying to say is, at least for me, the arrival of Smart Meters brings 99% potential goodness, and 1% uncertainty over how the data they generate at my residence could be mishandled or manipulated. In this day and age, for better or worse, most of us have learned to live with technologies (see: the web, social media, etc.) that expose some of our personal data online.  My recommendation to you is get to know your Smart Meter and get ready to step out into your new energy future with confidence.

Andy Bochman is author of the Smart Grid Security Blog and an Energy Security Lead for IBM’s Rational division, where the focus is on securing the software that runs the smart grid. Andy is a contributor to industry and national security working groups on energy security and cyber security. He lives in Boston, is an active member of the MIT Energy Club, and is the founder of the Smart Grid Security and DOD Energy Blogs.

Technorati Tags: andy bochman, energy, energy security, grid, security, Smart Grids, smart meters, utilities

A year ago, IBM’s leaders commissioned the IBM Center for Applied Insights, an internal research group,  to come up with a way of presenting the whole array of gains from Smarter Planet projects by focusing on vertical industries. The group created a new methodology for gathering and analyzing pertinent information and placing dollar values both on the components of a project and on the entire effort. The initiative, called “ROI for Smart,” has resulted in series of reports analyzing the returns for specific projects in eight industries. Steve Rogers, the director of the Center, says that unlike other approaches in the tech industry, “this is not about measuring the ROI of IBM’s products and services; it’s measuring the ROI of pursuing a Smarter Planet path and achieving higher levels of business competency.”

As a reporter covering the enterprise technology industry for two decades, I was deeply skeptical whenever tech vendors claimed that they had come up with their own assessments of the value they could create for customers. I still am. But I’m also impressed with the results that Rogers and his team have come up with.

You can decide for yourself if their analysis is credible by reading the reports:

Healthcare: Capturing Value from Patient Centered Care.
Retail: The Value of Smarter Merchandising.
Electronics: The Road to Customer Intimacy.
Banking: The Value of Credit Risk Management.
Transportation: The Value of Customer Centric Sales & Services.
Government: The Value of Smarter Social Services.
Telecom: Smarter Communications Through Analytics.
Chemicals and Petroleum: The Value of Smarter Oil and Gas Fields.

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This is the third in a series of three essays about the potential payoff from applying Smarter Planet thinking to businesses. The first two essays can be found here and here.

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The work on the “ROI for Smart” reports was done by a small team of quants aided by experts in each of the eight industries. They identified important activities in the industries that could gain from gathering data from many sources and analyzing it with the goal of making innovative, large-scale improvements. The teams looked deeply at the results achieved by companies that have already improved their business competencies. They tapped industry and academic literature for additional proof points. Then they modeled the business competencies and associated value-creation drivers so potential customers can use them to estimate the benefits they might receive from going the same route.

Each industry study describes a progression of improvements that can be taken step by step. In the airline industry, for example, the goal is to create customer-centric sales and services. The progression starts with consistently capturing the traveler’s travel history and profile data and offering information and services to them through a wide variety of communications channels. It concludes with the airline having the ability to deliver a stream of information to customers that enables door-to-door journeys via a variety of travel modes that are interconnected and seamlessly convenient–something IBM calls an integrated travel ecosystem.

Analyzing the real results achieved by a $12 billion airline, the study concludes that a similar airline could pocket $277 million in total economic benefits. Broken down into components, 35% of the gain comes from finding new ways of creating value for customers; 28%  from expanding the airline’s role in the travel ecosystem; 24% from increasing the loyalty of targeted customers by delivering a better traveling experience; and 13% by improving productivity. “This offers the industry the ability to increase their profit margins, get away from nuisance fees and make customers happier at the same time,” says Rogers.

A lot of organizations grok the Smarter Planet vision, but these reports tell them what the technology really means for their company in dollars and cents. It provides them with the data they need to build a strong case for these types of initiatives. At least that’s the goal. Now we’ll see if this kind of deeply researched marketing activity can stimulate demand in the marketplace.

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Why not? Jean-Christophe Samin, project manager for IBM’s smart grid deployment for electricity and water in Malta, says the engagement teaches two important lessons:

1) Communities shouldn’t do smart metering in a vacuum. It should be part of a comprehensive makeover of how their utilities manage their businesses–the entire information chain from meter to billing system. “Smart metering needs to go hand in hand with the larger transformation,” Samin says.

2) It’s important to start small with a pilot version of the system. You work the problems out without major disruptions to the utilities or consumers. “This is a fundamental step before launching the massive rollout,” he says.

Installing a wireless receiver in Malta

IBM in 2008 won a five-year contract to help Malta’s national power and water utilities, Enemalta Corp. and Water Services Corp., to build the world’s first national smart utility grid. The task was to replace 250,000 analog electric meters with smarter meters that can monitor electricity usage close to real time, identify electricity losses and set variable rates. At the same time, IBM is integrating the smart electricity metering applications with the island nation’s new smart water metering system.

Today, half way through the life of the project, more than 75,000 smart electric meters have been installed and they’re being added at a rate of 5,000 per month. Malta launched a smart grid Web portal that allows customers to get information about their accounts and, eventually, will allow them to monitor their consumption of water and electricity and compare their consumption with that of people with similar households.

While the system still has a long way to go to reach all of the island’s citizens and provide them with the full array of features, it’s already making a difference in many lives. For instance, previously, because of backlogs, people sometimes got their utility bills as rarely as once every six to eight months. Since the cost of electricity and water is so high on the island, they’d get socked with hug bills and have to scramble to come up with the money. Now, they’re billed reliably every two months and, and because the smart meters are monitored wirelessly, the bills reflect actual usage patterns, so there shouldn’t be surprises. People are able to budget and pay their bills with more confidence. “The benefits are favoring the consumer, and that’s helping with the acceptance of the program,” says Samin.

Down the road, the island’s smart utility grid has the potential of freeing it from dependency on expensive foreign oil. Businesses and individuals will be able to set up solar electricity generation systems and sell their excess energy to the utilities. In a country with an average of about 300 sunny days per year, that’s going to be a game changer.