By Clay Luthy, Global Distributed Energy Resource Leader, Energy & Utilities Industry, IBM

With gas prices hovering at $4.15 per gallon where I live, the talk of electric vehicles (EVs) has increased with vigor. More of my neighbors and friends are toying with the idea of making the switch – much of their reluctance though stems from the fear of inconvenience – will I find a charging station as easily as a gas pump, how will this impact my energy bill, how far can I go on a single charge? These consumer concerns are driving new innovations – uniting forward thinking players to perfect and deploy a smarter EV driving experience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As a resident of Washington DC, I don’t have to look very far without noticing the well-established bike sharing program that is currently in place.  Locals are biking to and from the subway station and to work while tourists are cruising along to increase the number of monuments and museums they can see in a day.

This approach to urban commuting is now applied to electric vehicles. For example, in Paris, Autolib launched an EV sharing program with great success. According to initial reports, 250 vehicles hit the road on the first day, 2000 are expected this summer and 3,000 are planned within the next two years. Like bike sharing, I can see why this mode has taken off in a city with over two million citizens and highly dense roads – a strategy that I believe, should be replicated in cities around the world.

New business models are being deployed to support privately owned electric vehicles as well. In Israel, Better Place is set to go live on a deployment of networked charging stations. Their innovative business model helps reduce the cost as users pay for electric vehicles much like they do a cell phone – they receive a discounted price on the vehicle and battery in exchange for subscribing to a service to recharge. Innovative business models are often what is needed to bring new technology to the mainstream.

Innovation is also driving the way we create fuel for electric vehicles. Already we are seeing renewable energy becoming cost competitive with traditional energy sources due to improved manufacturing processes and technological breakthrough. Within the next 5 years, we can expect to see the levelized cost (a common cost metric) of electricity generated from roof mounted solar to be the same as, or potentially even less than, your retail electricity price. This, to me, is exciting news for both our environment as well as for our transportation system.

It’s a known fact that electric vehicles can help increase the use of renewable energy. If EVs can communicate with the grid, they can charge based on the availability of renewable energy resources, such as sun and wind. This will help overcome the variability and relative unpredictability of renewable energy (the sun doesn’t always shine when it’s supposed to!) —a challenge that needs to be addressed if renewable energy will scale.

It’s also why the recently announced project with Honda and PG&E is so important – it allows vehicles and the grid to directly communicate with each other. Layer in IBM’s cloud based optimization and automatically, the vehicles become intelligent —now with the ability to charge in accordance with grid conditions.

IBM, Honda, and PG&E Enable Smarter Charging for Electric Vehicles

However, innovative business models and electricity from renewable sources will be less impactful if we are not successful at making the experience of recharging your electric vehicle as easy as pumping gas. This means that we must ensure open access to charge posts for all users regardless of who owns or operates them. Innovation is likewise occurring on this front — Data standards are under development to ensure charge posts communicate in a common way Think of it this way, what happens when you go from one city or state to another and need to recharge your vehicle?

You may be the realm of another service provider and much like cell phones in the old days, if proper systems aren’t place, you may not be able to recharge outside of your network.

In Europe, IBM and a consortium of partners are building a demonstration system that allows for seamless interoperability. As an example, a participant could drive from Barcelona to Rome, charge their vehicle and be accurately billed for the electricity even though the network of charge posts in the two cities are owned and operated by two separate entities.

Similarly, the IBM team in Slovakia is working with ZSE on a project that is designed to make charging across territories more convenient for consumer. Using e-mobility technology, this study will help interconnect the Slovakian capital city, Bratislava and Vienna with a “green highway” of public charging stations.

IBM and ZSE Create Virtual Green Highway for Electric Vehicles

It’s innovations like these that keep me both optimistic and fascinated by the future of the electric vehicle. With fuel prices rising higher and higher, the decision to switch to EVs is getting more attention but is till by no means an easy one, especially considering that Americans on average purchase a new car every five years. So, we all want to ensure we’re making the right decision.

The industry, local and national governments, auto-manufactures and utilities are making significant in-roads – the rest is up to us.

Today marks the last day of #EVweek. Thank you for participating in all of the various online activities. If have more opinions, we’d like to hear them. Continue the conversation today on IBM’s People for A Smarter Planet (P4SP) for #SmarterFriday, a daylong chat about EVs.

Technorati Tags: Clay Luthy, EDISON, EKZ, electric vehicles, energy, EV, EVweek, Honda, IBM, PG&E, smart grid, Smart Grids, Smarter Cities, Smarter Energy, Smarter Planet, Smarter Transportation, sustainability, traffic, transportation, ZSE

By Jonathan Marshall, Chief, External Communications
Pacific Gas and Electric Company

Electric vehicle (EV) owners and electric utilities may soon enjoy a much closer and more fulfilling relationship than traditional car owners have with gas stations, thanks to a new pilot project announced today by IBM, Honda Motors, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). This collaboration aims to demonstrate the ability to optimize the charge schedule for each customer’s EV battery so that the needs of customers and the electric grid are satisfied on an ongoing basis. That’s still a stretch for most utilities.

When the typical power engineer hears “electric vehicle,” he or she usually thinks: “challenge.” A plug-in vehicle can draw as much power as three homes in the more temperate parts of California. An enthusiastic bunch of early adopters could potentially overload local circuits if they all charge up at the same time in the same neighborhood.

But PG&E is thinking instead, “opportunity.” For one thing, we have a growing number of clean electric vehicles in our own fleet, from Chevy Volts to a new class of extended-range pickup trucks from Via Motors. And we know that widespread adoption of EVs throughout California will help the state meet its ambitious clean-air goals.

For another, we believe there’s great potential for using the latest “smart grid” technology to facilitate vehicle charging at night, when demand is low. By making use of underutilized generation and grid resources at off-peak times, EVs can help utilities make more efficient use of their assets and spread costs over a wider load without overtaxing the system.

PG&E demonstrated last year, in the first utility test of smart charging, that it could control vehicle charging through its SmartMeter™ infrastructure. But in a competitive marketplace, many customers may want to put control of their charging in other hands—such as the vehicle manufacturer or another trusted vendor. The whole process may someday be controlled by a third-party app on your smart phone.

The IBM-Honda-PG&E pilot takes an important step in that direction. The basic concept is to marry Honda’s knowledge of the status of its EVs and PG&E’s knowledge of the status of its grid with IBM’s “cloud” computing power to make charging smarter, simpler, and more efficient.

“We want to encourage third parties to innovate,” said Ulric Kwan, PG&E’s project manager. “What we haven’t yet demonstrated is whether you can develop a ‘brain’ in the cloud that meets our needs and those of our customers. Each customer has a different set of needs. The cloud has to figure this out and provide the proper charging levels to each EV, adapting to changing customer requirements and grid needs.”

This new pilot will demonstrate exactly that. IBM will take data from several Honda Fit EVs, via cellular uplink, and analyze it together with sample data from PG&E on the status of its electric distribution network to help optimize the charging schedule for each car. (Honda plans to begin selling the Fit EV to California customers this summer).

PG&E, meanwhile, still has plans—awaiting approval by the California Public Utilities Commission—to recruit up to 100 EV owners to test more advanced communications between the utility and EV battery chargers via SmartMeters™. This proposed pilot would bring us one step closer to the holy grail of using EV batteries as a form of distributed energy storage for capturing and making good use of fluctuating supplies of renewable energy.

For all of these projects, the overriding goal is the same: to ensure safe, reliable, and affordable service to our customers. Fortunately, PG&E has some very smart partners to help us make that happen.

Join PG&E and IBM for the #EVWeek Twitter Chat on April 12, from noon to 1pm ET @smarterplanet. For more information, visit: http://storify.com/smarterplanet/p4spchat-electric-vehicle-adoption

Technorati Tags: electric vehicles, energy, EVs, EVweek, IBM, PG&E, Smart Grids, Smarter Energy, Smarter Planet, Smarter Transportation, traffic, transportation

By Pat Davis, Vehicle Technologies Program Manager, Department of Energy (DOE)

“May you live in interesting times” can be either a blessing or a curse. Needless to say, those of us who work in the transportation sector are certainly living in interesting times, full of challenges and opportunities. Electrifying our vehicle fleet offers an abundance of both, making it a particularly exciting area for us at the Department of Energy (DOE).

As the manager for the U.S. Energy Department’s Vehicles Program, I lead a team working to get the most out of our cars and trucks, while minimizing their appetite for oil. Right now, 60 percent of the petroleum used in America fuels on-road vehicles—both consumer and commercial. A little less than half of this petroleum is imported, costing our country more than $1 billion every day. In addition to the national security implications of our dependence on foreign oil, our transportation sector also creates about one-third of America’s greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Although these figures may paint a daunting picture of the challenge ahead, I’m optimistic about meeting our transportation needs in more sustainable ways. Plug-in vehicles that run on domestically-produced electricity offer environmental, social, and economic benefits, and the variety and the quantity of electric and hybrid cars and trucks on the road is increasing. Car makers are rolling out new models; while the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf are the most widely available models now, manufacturers are planning on introducing more than two dozen new plug-in vehicle models over the next two years. Tax incentives help more people have access to this cutting-edge technology and many cities are updating plans and policies for the charging infrastructure to be ready for these new vehicles.

We’re seeing incredible technologies emerge from the research we fund at our national laboratories and other research institutions. In particular, the cost of batteries is dropping dramatically. Our research has already helped lower the cost of advanced lithium ion batteries by 50 percent in the last few years. We’re on track to lower it another 50 percent, bringing it down to $300/kWhr by 2015. By the end of the decade, we hope to have it even lower – $125/kWhr.  Lowering battery cost will help lead to less expensive plug-in vehicles and potentially increase their all-electric range. Many of these breakthroughs have come about through improvements in battery components.  For example, Envia recently announced that they are close to building battery cells that cost less than half as much as existing ones. Cathode technology developed at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory with support from DOE contributed to this leap forward.

Lightweight materials also offer great promise, because lighter vehicles require less energy to operate.  For every 10 percent in vehicle weight reduction, you could save fuel 6-8 percent on fuel. For electric cars, it means smaller batteries and lower costs. DOE is focused on reducing costs and widening the use of aluminum, magnesium, high strength steel, and carbon fiber composites.

Last year I participated in a roundtable dinner in Washington D.C, hosted by IBM and attended by General Motors, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Electric Drive Transport Association, MIT, and PEPCO Holdings. It was a general consensus that the combination of these upcoming advances and the urgent necessity to transform our fleet and the energy infrastructure brings us to a unique point in history. At the Department of Energy, we believe that electric drive offers great promise, we’re also continuing to research complementary technologies and smarter systems, such as advanced combustion and alternative home-grown fuels from non-food sources such as wood and waste streams. In addition, we look to industry and local governments to do their part. We encourage manufacturers to take the long view of these technologies by continuing on their push to produce more efficient vehicle models that meet consumers’ needs. We advise local governments to think holistically about their citizens’ transportation choices, including plug-in vehicles and by helping to put in place policies that support the introduction of those technologies. Most of all, we support efforts to learn from the best practices of others. Sharing a common vision will help all of us move forward to a more sustainable transportation future.

Today kicks off #EVweek. Join us for a weeklong discussion on Electric Vehicles. Follow #EVWeek to participate in a Twitter Chat on April 12, from noon to 1pm ET @smarterplanet. For more information, visit: http://storify.com/smarterplanet/p4spchat-electric-vehicle-adoption

Technorati Tags: DOE, electric vehicles, energy, EVs, smart grid, Smart Grids, Smarter Cities, Smarter Energy, Smarter Planet, Smarter Transportation, transportation

By Andreas Fuchs, co-project leader, Electric Mobility, EKZ, Kanton Zürich, Switzerland

It is estimated that by 2050, 95 percent of cars will be equipped with an electric socket. This will mean that more than five million parking lots in Switzerland alone will be need to be equipped with a charging station to enable electric vehicle (EV) charging. Now imagine if all of these cars began charging at the same time and the impact it would have on the power grid.

While the electrical grid in Switzerland is not yet “smart,” the fact remains that EVs are being purchased. It is therefore, up to the auto manufacturers, utilities and equipment suppliers to ensure that the charging process is coordinated and controlled in order to prevent grid overload.

This was the driving incentive behind the Smartphone application (app) pilot that we are conducting with IBM Research in Zürich and the University of Applied Research Zürich in Winterthur, ZHAW. The goal is to study how mobile communication can be used to remotely control the EV charging process.

As you can read here and watch here – the driver can set boundary conditions for the charging process, using a smartphone, such as immediate or later charging, or delegate the charging responsibility to the utility. From this point, a charge schedule is created based on the availability of renewable resources such as sun and wind, as well as current grid conditions.

The main menu

Image 1: The Main Menu

In the graphic above you can see the interface for the app, which is web based and works on all of the latest smartphones and tablets.  Going in an counter-clockwise direction:

• Starting on the lower right edge: “Vehicle” one can choose which EV they plan to drive.  This could be particularly useful for car sharing programs or for managing an EV fleet of cars, similar to what we have at EKZ.
• On top to the left: The battery state of charge and an estimation of the remaining range in kilometers is displayed.
• On top to the right: Users can see a GPS map showing the locationof the EV in relation to the closest charging stations (data by www.lemnet.org).

• Bottom, to the left: This button offers EV drivers with the option to select from three charging modes – the first being “Immediate” which basically means that once plugged in, the car will begin to charge. For this project, the Twingo car was set with a default charging current that would provide drivers with a typical daily distance of 40km in Switzerland.
• The second charging option – “Premium” automatically shifts the charging period to the night. This will help avoid adding strain to the grid during the day, when most systems   are running.
• The third option – “Intelligent” allows the user to delegate the charging to the utility. Using a virtual power plant application, a utility can determine time of charge and load based on the charging history. For example, a car that is needs to be charged up to 85 percent at 4:30pm when the owner leaves for work.

Image 2: The blue rectangle during the night represents off-peak load charging of the electrical car.

Many companies are making in-roads in developing innovative technologies that have the potential to not only change how consumers get from A to B, but also change their level of interaction and control.

Image 3: The virtual power plant application calculates a “charging time table” that takes conflicting requirements into account, such as user preferences and available energy.

Before, consumers would just grab a set of keys and go – however, in the years to come, it will be a more connected experience. To prepare, many countries – especially in Europe, are implementing infrastructures to support the mass adoption of EVs – look no further than Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom or Ireland and of course Switzerland. We have the cars, now all we need is reliable energy, and the roads, charging stations, technology, as well as the consumers to keep up.

For more information: Visit http://www.klewel.com/conferences/iamf2012/ and http://www.klewel.com/conferences/iamf2012/

Join the #EVWeek Twitter Chat on April 12, from noon to 1pm ET @smarterplanet. For more information, visit: http://storify.com/smarterplanet/p4spchat-electric-vehicle-adoption

Technorati Tags: electric vehicles, energy, EVs, EVweek, IBM, smart grid, Smart Grids, smarter charging, Smarter Cities, Smarter Energy, Smarter Planet, Smarter Transportation, sustainability, transportation

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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.

Technorati Tags: IBM